Contrasting styles of BJP, Cong leadership

Radhika Ramaseshan

Senior journalist

When the Congress was in the throes of a troubled leadership transition from a Gandhi to a non-Gandhi nominee after 24 years, the BJP seemed to have accomplished the exercise quietly and painlessly. The word from the party, not officially declared yet, was that the incumbent president, JP Nadda, would continue helming the BJP until the 2024 General Election, the way his predecessor Amit Shah did until the 2019 election. The news expectedly did not grab eyeballs or preoccupy the political commentariat because the process was seemingly pulled off exactly the way the BJP desired.

The BJP constitution was amended in 2012 to allow a second term for Nitin Gadkari, the incumbent of the day, of three years. That was ordained by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which had picked Gadkari as the president after the BJP was in disarray following consecutive defeats in the 2004 and 2009 elections.

Destiny or rather internal machinations denied Gadkari an extended tenure, making the next power shift a troubled one from the BJP’s perspective. The party was by and large used to textbook presidents, who adhered to their mandate without ado, but there were intrusions.

Nadda has been working to tailor his responsibilities to the expectations and needs of the ruling dispensation. He has not courted a serious controversy because he never overstepped his unstated jurisdiction. He doesn’t necessarily keep a low profile because his visibility on social media and public forums is full-on. He addresses public meetings in the BJP’s targeted states and engages with party workers and regional functionaries.

Let’s be clear. The BJP organisation is no less important than the government. That’s the impression Prime Minister Narendra Modi has conveyed. A seasoned organisational hand, who worked in several states as an RSS pracharak and a BJP prabhari, Modi realised that a powerful ruling establishment could overwhelm the party and reduce it to an adjunct to the government that might negatively impact the BJP’s raison d’etre: win elections at every level and take over the levers of power to stamp its authority from the micro to the macro tiers.

Importantly, the ruling party’s organisation is the only vehicle for the cadre — and the BJP prides itself for raising an industrious workforce — to articulate its hopes, beliefs and disappointments in a regimented order where power is centralised in Delhi. Therefore, Modi is as deeply invested in maintaining the party organisation in shipshape as in attending to the rigours of statecraft and the business of governance.

For Modi, it is essential to have a party president who thinks like him, one who second-guesses his mind and executes the political leadership’s diktat to the last letter without raising questions. Nadda fashioned himself after Kushabhau Thakre, who helmed the BJP from 1998 to 2000 and made a place for himself in the BJP’s annals as an “ideal” president. Thakre was of RSS vintage. The BJP was in power at the Centre in those years under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and was running up against problems from the NDA allies or the RSS and its affiliates. Thakre kept his counsel to himself and allowed Madan Das Devi, a senior Sangh office-bearer, the right to intervene in domestic trouble. There were powerful individuals right from LK Advani to Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, M Venkaiah Naidu and Modi to offer advice and help when required, while Thakre lived in their shadow.

Not every BJP president was as pliant as Thakre. K Jana Krishnamurthi stepped into the breach in 2001 after his predecessor Bangaru Laxman was irreparably implicated in the ‘Operation West End’ sting job and was incarcerated for accepting bribes in an alleged defence deal. Krishnamurthi, an Advani mentee, walked in on a moral high, but the temptation to make political statements was too strong to resist.

In July 2001, when Vajpayee was in a fix over re-inducting Mamata Banerjee’s TMC in the NDA after she quit months earlier over the same sting operation, which also arraigned the then Defence Minister, George Fernandes, Krishnamurthi stated that Mamata must be made to “wait out” for a while before she was restored a Cabinet berth. Vajpayee was miffed with his assertion because the NDA was wobbly, needed to shore itself with more allies and, therefore, no bait to Mamata or anyone was too big not to consider. Krishnamurthi’s tenure lasted exactly a year.

From the vantage point of a general secretary, Modi observed the power dynamics governing the government-party relationship and ostensibly gleaned lessons for the future. Not only did he not have to straighten out wrinkles, because he anointed Shah in 2014 and later Nadda, but he also crafted a near-perfect equation with the RSS, which has not complicated matters for the government, at least so far. The essence of the government-party relationship under Modi is zero disruption.

The Congress has been out of power since 2014 and has faded away from most of the states it previously ruled. The Gandhis indulged in their share of virtue signalling by allowing an “election” to be conducted for the president’s office between two non-family nominees. The debate over how transparent and fair was the ‘election’ of Mallikarjun Kharge will be interminable.

The Congress never demarcated the party-government boundary when the UPA was in power. The National Advisory Council, led by Sonia Gandhi, worked like a parallel entity beside the government. At least that was the perception it enforced. The biggest challenge for a non-Gandhi president will lie in the modalities of the arrangement that will finally emerge and the latitude that Kharge will exercise in decision-making.

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