New Delhi: Only a couple of days have passed since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fell short of a majority, but the churn in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has already begun. The incumbent Narendra Modi government will have to be dictated by coalition concerns, especially with two of its biggest allies Nitish Kumar and N. Chandrababu Naidu, well-known to be hard bargainers.
Narendra Modi will likely be sworn in on June 9, 2024 evening. Ahead of that, hectic consultations with both Naidu and Nitish already seem to be bogging down the BJP. Speculations have been rife that the Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party has demanded significant ministries and the position of the Lok Sabha speaker. Nitish Kumar, apart from making similar demands, is also looking to get some of the Modi government’s decisions reversed.
JD(U)’s senior leader told reporters that the party would like the NDA government to reconsider the contentious Agnipath scheme, which recruits soldiers in the armed forces for a period of only four years without much pension benefits. The senior leader said that there was great resentment against the scheme in north India, where the young get recruited in the armed forces in hordes. The scheme came across as evidently unpopular during the election campaign, something that only amplified noises against the Modi government.
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He also mooted the idea of a pan-India caste census and said such an exercise is the call of the time, even as he said his party’s support to the BJP is “unconditional”. More importantly, he reiterated his party’s stance that it was opposed to the proposed Uniform Civil Code (UCC), but added that a resolution regarding it should be taken after consultations with other parties.
It is well-known that the BJP has been in the mood to implement the UCC; one of its state governments in Uttarakhand has already passed a Bill on it in the assembly. At the same time, the BJP has been reluctant to take an unequivocal stand on the caste census. In Bihar, the party had supported the caste survey conducted by the Nitish Kumar government when he was a part of the INDIA bloc, but took strong jibes against it at the national level, accusing the opposition forces of dividing the country along caste lines.
Nitish’s immediate rival, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, has already started to press Nitish on the issue of a special status for Bihar. “NDA has numbers but we want the government which will be formed to take care of Bihar and ensure that it gets the special status. It is a good opportunity for Nitish Kumar if he is the kingmaker. He should ensure that Bihar gets the special status and conduct a caste-based census in the entire country,” Yadav told reporters this morning.
For Modi, who is used to taking decisions unilaterally ever since he became the chief minister of Gujarat in 2001, the coalition dynamics will not come easy. Although he has been quite adept at making pre-poll alliances, roping in socially-influential leaders and engineering defections, it will be the first time when he will also have to actually face allies who are unpredictable and command a stature of their own.
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Both Nitish and Naidu have been demanding a special status for their states 0 Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, as earlier mentioned.
Naidu had exited the NDA in 2018 over reluctance of the Centre to grant such a package to the Telugu-speaking state. The veteran Nitish, too, is well-versed in making the best use of a coalition government, and is also known to somersault if his demands are not met. Likewise, he is reported to have demanded ministries like the Railways, rural development, and Jal Shakti.
On the other hand, Naidu has consistently shown interest in ministries related to infrastructure development, a field that has been a consistent focus throughout his political career. He is reported to have requested for a special package on building Amravati as Andhra Pradesh’s capital – a decision that was reversed by the outgoing Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy government.
Although Modi, in his speech after the election results came out, spoke about taking “bold decisions” in his third term, he will have to keep his allies happy and take care of not rubbing them the wrong way.
He may not just have to appease both his small and big allies, all of whom will look to make the best of the situation and get their demands met, but will also have to attend to the brooding resentment against over-centralisation of the BJP within his own rank and file.
A large number of BJP leaders have already begun to question the way the Modi-Amit Shah duo have taken control of the party, putting at stake its long history of democratic functioning. Although most of such remarks are being made off-the-record, they are only likely to grow.
For instance, a Uttar Pradesh-based mid-level BJP leader told this correspondent that the parliamentary board of the party, which was once powerful, had become an approval forum for all Modi-Shah duo’s decisions. The leader also said that the drubbing that the BJP received was partly because of the bureaucratic, as opposed to cadre-driven, campaign in the state. He added that many like him were not given any role in the campaign, although they have been associated with the party for over three decades. Rather, he said, a large chunk of responsibilities were given to government officials and business contractors who are seen as close to the top leaders.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Union home minster Amit Shah. Photo: Flickr/CC BY 2.0
Possibly fearing such internal dissensions snowballing into an uncontrollable monster, Modi swiftly staked a claim to lead the next government. He quickly resigned from the post of prime minister, as he was required to do so after losing the majority, and conducted an NDA meeting to get himself elected as the leader of the alliance. He will also be presiding over the BJP’s parliamentary party on June 7, 2024 to assert his supremacy.
The hurried nature of the moves came across as acts of nervousness more than his trademark surefootedness.
Even as Modi is ambushed by different problems to handle, all at once, the BJP will also likely begin to discuss J.P. Nadda’s replacement as the party president. Among the frontrunners, sources said, are former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, former Union health minister Mansukh Mandaviya, and BJP’s Gujarat state president C.R. Patil. Modi is likely to prefer the Gujarat-based Mandaviya or Patil over Chouhan, given the love-hate relationship he has had with the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister.
However, Patil is said to be fighting a failing vision, while Mandaviya may not be a tall enough leader in the party to assume the role of the party’s chief. Nadda, who was a Modi acolyte and did not command much power among the party ranks, was chosen as a figurehead when the Modi-Shah duo took all the decisions. Nadda oversaw BJP’s defeats in his home state Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka first, and could not steer the party to a majority in the Lok Sabha. In such circumstances, the party will discuss whether to have another figurative head or a leader who can really steer the BJP ship. In the case of the latter, Chouhan, a leader in his own right, could get the support of senior leaders of the party.
The coalition dynamics have already begun to take shape, and it is likely to only complicate dynamics between the allies in the future.
Moreover, the seniors in the BJP (think Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia) who have remained in his shadows for over a decade may also be itching to democratise the party once again. According to some insiders, Shah may be the likely one to take the first bullet, as is evident from the widespread and visible anger among ‘upper’ caste BJP functionaries in Uttar Pradesh – the state that scripted Modi’s decline.
What appears to be restricting Modi from taking “bold decisions”, which have more often been disastrous for the economy (recall demonetisation and GST), the coalition will also readily put a system of checks and balances in the next Modi government. Or, perhaps, one needs to start calling it an NDA government, like Modi himself did in his first speech after the results.
