Venkaiah puts the squeeze on Rajnath

Prashun Bhaumik |

Venkaiah Naidu seems to be overshadowing party chief Rajnath Singh in the run-up to the polls

By Divya Malik Lahiri

As the deadline for the next general elections gets closer, the power dynamics appear to be changing in the Bharatiya Janata Party. Rajnath Singh may be BJP president, but gradually and surely the power centre appears to be shifting to the party’s core team.

L.K. Advani is the undisputed leader and will remain so, after the RSS paved the way for projecting him as the party’s and the National Democratic Alliance’s prime ministerial candidate. Sources in the party say that Advani’s anointment in December last year made way for the return of the BJP’s core team.

Advani ensured that the team which had been in place before the 2004 debacle was brought back…and so gradually Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley started acquiring their old clout in the party. Sushma Swaraj too was brought back as the face who would liaise with allies, both present and future.

Many of these leaders had been sidelined in the party by Rajnath Singh when he took over as president in early 2006. Jaitley was removed as spokesperson, Naidu refused to take any official position and Narendra Modi was removed as member of the parliamentary board, the BJP’s highest policy-making body.

Many in the party believe that it’s Venkaiah Naidu who has become the pivot of the party, and has perhaps become even more powerful than he was when he was BJP president during the NDA government days.

Some sources in the party even compare him to Kushabhau Thakre, who had become the centre point of the party in the early part of Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure. Thakre was also seen as a centre point in the party and few can forget the sleepless nights he gave his own government over allowing foreign direct investment in the insurance sector. Similar comparisons are being made to Sunder Singh Bhandari, who yielded immense clout in the mid-’80s.

Venkaiah Naidu is currently the head of the campaign management core group that was set up recently to plan strategy and begin earnest preparations for the coming Lok Sabha elections. So if ticket aspirants have started queuing at Rajnath Singh’s residence, many of them make an appearance at Venkaiah Naidu’s plush residence at 30 Aurangzeb Road first. This, despite the fact that his campaign management committee has nothing to do with finalising tickets.

As head of the committee, Mr Naidu will be managing the coming Lok Sabha elections. For instance, he recently wrote to all the state presidents to start identifying suitable candidates, work on state-level manifestos which are not imposed from the top, begin  the process to ensure smooth seat sharing with current allies and project Mr Advani as the most able leader to lead the alliance.

Not surprisingly, Mr Naidu also played a key role in the run-up to the trust vote, which got mired in controversy because of the BJP’s allegations against the Congress.

Party sources say this is the time to put the party’s best team forward and that is why the BJP’s core working team has become more powerful.  Party vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi says, “Elections are a challenge. We want to face them unitedly and I’m confident that Advani-ji’s strong administrative and nationalistic image will help us”.

So what worked in Venkaiah Naidu’s favour? He is seen as someone who has strong organisational skills and the capacity to take everyone along. Of course, his closeness with Advani is also one of his biggest USPs. Along with Arun Jaitley, Naidu also played a deciding role in getting the warring party factions of Ananth Kumar and Yeddyurappa in Karnataka to work together.

Another factor which will work in Naidu’s favour will be that he is the only key second- rung leader who will not be contesting the Lok Sabha elections. As a result, the management of the elections will be left mainly to him.  Party sources say that all the second rung leaders, who had avoided contesting the 2004 Lok Sabha elections to focus on campaigning in the entire country, will be contesting this time.

So Arun Jaitley will be contesting from Palampur or Lucknow,  Sushma Swaraj from Kanpur or Bellary and Muqtar Abbas Naqvi from his old Rampur seat. Rajnath Singh too is  planning  to contest from a UP seat.

The BJP has won seven State Assembly elections since the 2004 debacle, but ironically the credit has not gone to the party president. The Naidu-Jaitley duo have walked away with most of the credit. Arun Jaitley was party in-charge in many of these states, including the last two, Gujarat and  Karnataka, in which the party came out with unexpectedly good results. Jaitley is also in charge of Uttar Pradesh and the party hopes to apply his winning mantra in a state where the party has been slipping with every election.

Jaitley says the entire team is working together. “Atal-ji and Advani-ji have had a unique primacy in the party. That will remain irrespective of the position they hold. The president of the party at any given time will always be the first among equals. Each of the emerging second line has its own strengths and utilities which are adequately being used”.

So what has worked against Rajnath Singh. Rajnath’s decline and the rise of the working team have worked simultaneously. The BJP’s drastic decline in Uttar Pradesh, Rajnath’s home State has worked against him. Party sources often tout this example that in the 96′ assembly elections, the BJP’s tally was 127, when the party contested elections in 2002; with Rajnath as  Chief  Minister it slipped to 88  and the figure came down to 50 in the 2007 elections.

Soon after the loss in Uttar Pradesh, the RSS which had pushed Rajnath Singh’s candidature for presidentship, also became less enthusiastic about supporting him and decided that it was time to project Mr Advani as the party’s PM candidate.

Sources say the president was also asked by the RSS to involve the second-rung leaders more actively in the party.

On the record, though, even Rajnath Singh’s rivals in UP politics are not ready to admit that there has been a change in the power dynamics in the party. Kalraj Mishra, who is now in charge of Bihar says: “It may appear that Venkaiah Naidu and Arun Jaitley have become dominant because whatever responsibility has been given to them, they have come out with flying colours, but that doesn’t mean that Rajnath Singh-ji’s role has been diminished in any way. All this is happening with Rajnath Singh’s will”.

But privately, most leaders in the party admit that Mr Advani and his working team have the final say on almost every critical issue.

It’s not surprising then that Mr Advani had to contradict Rajnath Singh at the last BJP executive in Delhi in early June.

When Rajnath Singh raised the issue of Article 370 and uniform civil code, both issues which are synonymous with a more hardline image of the party, Mr Advani politely reminded him the next day at the executive that stitching together a winning alliance and keeping it together, irrespective of different ideologies, is far more important.

But despite the changing power equations, party insiders say that the party president and the second-rung leaders are trying to put up a united show to ensure that they don’t lose the edge they have acquired because of the growing differences within the ruling alliance.