Bihar elections 2015: BJP leaders rule out change in leadership

The crackers suddenly went silent at the BJP office two hours after counting for the Bihar election began. It was time for introspection.

Will it go beyond just introspection? BJP leaders ruled out change in leadership. “Organisational elections are approaching and Amit Shah will be party president again,” said BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya. After all, it was under Shah that the party had swept Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections and come to power in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir. But, the crushing defeat at the hands of the Mahagathbandhan, less than ten months after the Delhi debacle, has raised questions about the party’s organisational failure. In Bihar, every strategy — social engineering, putting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the forefront of the NDA’s battle without projecting a chief ministerial candidate, the politics of polarisation and the selection of candidates — failed.

Social engineering: The BJP roped in Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP, Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAM and Upendra Kushwaha’s RLSP to take on the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad Yadav alliance which had a sway over 35 per cent Yadav, Muslim and Kurmi vote, to begin with. The BJP was hoping to capture the dalit, mahadalit and Kushwaha vote. However, Manjhi, Paswan and Kushwaha together won six seats.

The BJP admitted that it could not take on the “larger alliance” in whose favour the “arithmetic” went. It cited that vote share figures of the party, which had suffered losses in its strongholds in the third phase, had gone up from 16.49 per cent in 2010 to 24.4%. However, the party had contested 160 seats this time. Faceless state battle: Modi, the BJP’s star campaigner held 26 rallies, while Shah addressed 76. The BJP decided against projecting a chief ministerial candidate, fearing it could cause rebellion within the party and turn off certain communities. This turned it into a Modi versus Nitish battle, while the BJP did not seem to have a face to challenge the JD-U leader.

Shah and several union ministers and party leaders shifted to Bihar in the run-up to the elections with Ananth Kumar, Bhupendra Yadav and Dharmendra Pradhan playing a crucial role. The faces of Modi and Shah dominated the campaign in posters and rallies as state leaders — Sushil Kumar Modi, Nand Kishore Yadav and Prem Kumar — went into the background. The Bihar experience could also force the party to rethink its strategy of fighting faceless state battles in future, particularly in UP. In other words, it was not enough that the BJP fought elections projecting Modi, if there was no formidable grassroot leader from the state in the picture. Politics of Polarisation: Ahead of the fifth phase of elections, which had a high concentration of Muslim voters, Shah tried to stir the communal pot saying if the Mahagathbandhan won, crackers would be burst in Pakistan. Modi, in his rallies, attacked Nitish and Lalu saying they had conspired to get religious-based reservation diluting the quota for SCs, STs and OBCs. Beef politics, comments of BJP leaders against Shahrukh Khan, the advertisement taking on Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav on polling day all appear to have backfired on the NDA.

While in caste-ridden politics of Bihar, the BJP failed to sway the majority vote to consolidate in its favour with its strident rhetoric, it alienated the 18 per cent Muslims. For the BJP, the Muslim alienation could come in the way of its aspiration of a Congress-mukt Bharat in states like West Bengal, Kerala and northeast where minority population has a say. Fissures within Party: The inner strife in the BJP surfaced as the blame game began. isgruntled party leader Shatrughan Sinha tweeted ït appears that the issue of Bihari vs Bahari (and Bihari Babu’s absence) has been settled once and for all.”Another party MP RK Singh castigated the selection of MPs.

Barbs
From questioning the DNA of Nitish Kumar to “jungle raj”of Lalu Prasad Yadav, the BJP’s shift from development to diatribe, was an echo of the Delhi election.