By encouraging members of other political outfits to join the Saffron Brigade, the Bhartiya Janata Party is in fact hurting itself. The BJP always boasted to be a party with a difference, and now by accepting even insignificant activists, who have never ever won any election, the party is denting its own image. The question being asked is that why would a party led by a strong and charismatic leader like Narendra Modi, need minions to boost its chances.
If the defections have been engineered to create a perception about its popularity, just ahead of the Parliamentary polls, it is a strategy which is certainly not working.
The perception is very much in favour of the Saffron Brigade and adding some failed politicians to its list is not going to make any difference. Yes, many a times, there is a difference between perception and reality and what happens on June 4th, when the results come out, is something which is entirely in the hands of the people, who would either give a third term to Modi and his party or allow someone else to wrest power.
The second possibility appears bleak at this stage though many in the Opposition are claiming that the BJP would not be able to create history. In any case, the ball is now in the people’s court and they alone are supreme in a democracy. In the last few days, two national spokespersons of the Congress, Gaurav Vallabh and Rohan Gupta switched sides and were given a rousing welcome in the party by senior leaders. Gaurav was provided two opportunities by the Congress to prove his worth when he was granted tickets to first contest the election from Jharkhand and after he failed, to be in the fray from Rajasthan.
He again lost.
Rohan Gupta, too has no electoral victories in his kitty and was still accepted in the party, merely because he comes from Gujarat. Incidentally, Gujarat is considered by party bosses as the BJP’s strongest state and thus his joining is immaterial. What it has done to the party is that by accepting two defectors, who evidently may cite their own reasons for leaving, the BJP has scored a self-goal. Of late, a perception has also been growing that the Saffron Brigade was low in confidence and was therefore engaged in the game of poaching.
The issue is that why would the BJP be low in confidence and why does it need to wage a psychological war on its opponents. Recently, the BJP had given tickets to six MLAs who had been disqualified by the Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker for defying the party whip. All of them had won the last time after defeating the BJP candidates in their respective areas. Now they are being propped up by the party whom they had vanquished and the candidates who lost the polls are expected to vote and support them.
Notwithstanding claims to the contrary, would it be fair on the BJP activists who had landed on the losing side the last time. Similarly, in other states, there are leaders who had similarly won against the BJP and now are its allies and have been beneficiaries of the largesse shown by the Central leadership. All this is happening at the cost of the original party workers, who had toiled hard for decades, with the hope that one day, they too could be MLAs or MPs from their own party. The complexion of the party is undergoing a change and this would affect the morale of the cadres in the long run besides diluting the commitment to the Sangh ideology.
The fact is that out of the people, the BJP has accepted in its fold during the past few years, it is only perhaps the Assam Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, who is a prize catch. He is the BJP’s main operational man in the North East and has so far delivered.
Others maybe big names but have yet to prove their worth to the party. In every Parliamentary election contested by the BJP since 2014, the number of former Congressmen in the fray has been very large.
It sends a message that the BJP did not have people who could have contested and won, so the help of outsiders is being taken. This is not the kind of image, the world’s largest party should have. The decline of the Congress too had commenced when it had accepted in its ranks, those who were ideologically opposed to its thinking. Recently, Sanjay Nirupam, who had joined the party from Shiv Sena quit after accusing the leadership of many things. He was a misfit from the very beginning and it was a matter of time that he would have left.
There was Mohan Prakash, who joined and was made incharge of Maharashtra. This mistake cost the Congress dearly and his being there, gradually started the downslide since he was neither familiar with the party culture nor was accessible to the MLAs, who were also reluctant to inter-act with him. There are numerous other examples such as that of former Gujarat Chief Minister Shankar Sinh Vaghela, who was made the PCC president when Modi led his party to its first victory in the 2002 Assembly polls. Vaghela was unable to make any difference and landed up on the losing side.
The Congress since that drubbing has not been able to put its act together in Gujarat. The BJP has now been busy poaching, and its candidates list from Punjab and Haryana indicates that preferential treatment has been given to those who had joined from other parties, particularly the Congress. The shortpoint is that if ideological purity has to be maintained, there has to be some criteria for accepting defectors. The exercise has many downsides as well and the Central leadership of the party should always keep that in mind. Elections are won on party’s performance and its leadership. And not through defections.