The re-election of Amit Shah, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alter ego, as BJP president on Sunday, inter alia, is expected to ensure continuity in the high-powered team Modi in 2019 and beyond.
The BJP constitution provides for a two-term president and hence Shah, the most powerful leader in the party after Modi and considered a key architect of BJP’s resounding victory in the 2014 parliamentary elections, will be at the helm to micro-manage the strategy for the next Lok Sabha polls as well.
And to win the 2019 general elections, the BJP has to bag at least half of the 80 Lok Sabha seats from the heartland Uttar Pradesh, if not repeat the magic of winning an unprecedented 71 seats roughly two years ago.
In spite of his failings, no leader in the BJP today can match the loyalty, high energy and focus of 51-year-old Shah. That is if everything goes as per the Modi-Shah script.
Shah’s Immediate Challenge Will Be the Upcoming Elections
To win 2019, his toughest test will be helping the Prime Minister in balancing good governance and Hindutva in the next three years. To this end, he has to take the RSS on board to push the reform agenda and control the fringe elements in the Sangh Parivar besmirching the image of the government.
Though his immediate challenge will be the upcoming elections in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry, the real test will be in 2017, when key states like UP, Gujarat and Punjab will go to polls.
In the next round of polls, the stakeholders are the Congress, CPM, Trinamool Congress and the AIADMK; the BJP is inconsequential barring Assam and, hence, Shah may not be hauled over the coals even if the party fails to perform in this round. Any victory or impressive performance will be icing on the cake.
But a year later, he will have no excuse if the party failed to perform in UP and Gujarat, two crucial states going to polls along with Punjab.
Shah Will Have to Face a Resurgent Congress
While UP is considered the gateway to Delhi, the stakes are high in Gujarat, the home state of both Modi and Shah. Micro-managing UP and Gujarat polls simultaneously will be a tough job for Shah. In a first in the BJP, the party president and the Prime Minister are from the same state.
Two untested entities – the Aam Aadmi Party and the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti led by maverick Hardik Patel – will be testing the electoral waters in Gujarat next year. While the AAP could make Shah’s job easy by splitting Congress votes, the PAAS could be double-edged.
The absence of a Grand Alliance in UP, like the one witnessed in Bihar, could help the BJP in the heartland state as the secular camp led by SP, BSP and the Congress could face a three-way split.
Nevertheless, at a pan-India level, Shah will have to face a resurgent Congress (thanks to BJP’s hubris and sloppy handling of a host of issues pertaining to Dalits, minorities, liberals and intelligentsia) and formidable regional parties such as the Trinamool Congress, the AIADMK, BJD and AAP who could become party poopers for the saffron party.
Modi and Shah’s Campaign Strategy
It may be recalled that soon after the Bihar fiasco, veterans LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha and Shanta Kumar tried to trigger a mini mutiny against Shah by issuing a joint statement calling for a review of party’s “flawed” poll strategy.
The party chief appears to have learnt some lessons from the drubbings in Delhi and Bihar. The party has rightly decided to involve state leaders in a big way in planning the campaign and strategy for the upcoming polls while Modi and Shah will campaign extensively to swing the voters.
As part of a strategy to minimise turf war as was witnessed in Bihar and Delhi, the RSS has now become instrumental in picking the right candidates for BJP state presidents as was seen in the recent appointments in West Bengal, Assam and Kerala.
Intense factional feuds in the Congress and its inability to regain a pre-eminent position in key states like UP, Bihar, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh accounting for 247 out of the 545 Lok Sabha MPs and the absence of grand alliances against the BJP, courtesy a disparate and divided Opposition, will help Shah mitigate many of the saffron party’s negatives.
Nonetheless, to milk this boon, the BJP must save itself, mainstream itself by being able to absorb the vast liberal, democratic and secular space in the country. It will be foolish to sit on the laurels of 2014 when it vanquished the Congress. Electoral dynamics are too dicey to repeat in a volatile country like India.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist.)