The strategy to open party gates indiscriminately to disgruntled Opposition leaders boomeranged as the exercise began to erode the party's basic ideological content
Honey attracts flies. Power too has the same qualityof attracting 'borderless flying politicians' ever on the lookout for an opportunity to side with power.
The march of the BharatiyaJanata Party across the states was stupendous after the Modi era began in 2014. In 2015, it breached the high wall of Jammu and Kashmir, coming to power in alliance with the Peoples' Democratic Party.By 2018, the party ruledover 21 states and was looking forward to bring the remaining states under its control when it started suffering electoral setbacks.
The territorial shrinkbegan in December 2018 when the assembly election results in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chattisgarhfavoured the Congress. Losing in three major Hindi-heartland states was quite a setback to the BJP. And then it lost Maharashtra after forming a government.
The steady rise of the BJPowes itself to the unwavering popularity of brand Modi, strengthening of the National Democratic Alliance at state levels, and engineering defections,andaccommodating 'borderless flying politicians' looking for greener pastures. As electoral returns shrank, the party managers increasingly used the third option of attracting wannabes from rival political camps.
The lowpolitical dividends on account of admitting those not rooted in BJP's 'ideology' was amply reflected in the recent upheavals in Karnataka, Tripura, and West Bengal.
The strategy of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah to open party gates indiscriminately to disgruntled opposition leaders boomeranged as the exercise began to erode the party's basic ideological content. West Bengal is the latest example where the BJP candidates who joined the party on the eve of the assembly elections are now itching to go back to the Trinamool nest.
Even Madhya Pradesh is resting on unstable ground. The BJP wrested power from the Congress in early 2020 by encouraging several legislators to defect, including veteran Jyotiraditya Scindia. The newly 'saffronized' MLAs formerly with Congress are today controlling the levers of power. They superseded the cadre-based leadership in the Gwalior-Chambal belt, triggering discontent among the latter.
The party's 'go-for-it' philosophy is quite unlike that of its famed mentor Atal Behari Vajpayee who preferred to quit as Prime Minister in May 1996 saying, "if breaking up political parties is the only way to form a coalition that stays in power..I don't want to touch such a coalition with a barge pole".
In Karnataka, the BJP which demolished the Congress bastion is currently witnessing relentless dissent also onaccount of demands made byturn-coats who were allotted plum portfolios at the expense of hard-working party leaders. There still are a few 'party hoppers'who are not satisfied with the rewards they got for switching over and want to stage a coup against Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa.
K Sudhakaris one of the 17 Congress and JD(S) legislators who shifted their allegiance to the BJP and helped Yediyurappa form the government in 2019. He was given the important portfolio of health. He crossed over from the Congress and won the Chikkaballapurabypoll in 2019 on a BJP ticket. The youngest cabinet minister in the Yeddyurappa government, Sudhakar is a rising Vokkaliga leader in a government led by a 'Lingayat' strongman.
The growing prominence of a former Congressman in the BJP highlights both the new 'realpolitik' of the party and its pitfalls.
Not all 'outsiders' in the BJP settled down peacefully after getting their rewards from the party and the government. C P Yogeeshwara, another ex-Congressman who played a key role in the fall of the Congress-JD(S) coalition in Karnataka and was made tourism minister in the Yediyurappa government, is now one of the prominent leaders wanting the removal of the Chief Minister.
The state BJP leadership wanted to use Yogeeshwaraas the party's face in the Vokkaliga-dominated old Mysuru region against Congress state president D K Shivakumar and former Chief Minister and JDS leader H D Kumaraswamy.But he turned against Yediyurappaand the fight is in the open with the latter's loyalists accusing the minister of corruption.
The BJP is unsettled in its lone southern bastion because of the newly acquired 'political asset' becoming a liability. The Congress and the JDS are waiting for an opportunity to use him and any other turn-coats to rock the saffron boat.
Yogeeshwara, the actor-turned-politician, first entered politics in 1999 and won as an independent, then joined the Congress and contested successfully in 2004 and 2008. He quit the Congress in 2009 and contested the by-elections from Channapatna on the BJP ticket and lost. He won another by-election in 2011 and went on to become a minister.
However, in 2013, he quit the BJP and joined the Samajwadi Party which he left in 2016 and came back to the Congress only to join the BJP again ahead of the 2018 polls and settled for a cabinet post after the success of 'OperationKamal-2' that brought the BJP government to power in 2019.He was made a Minister even though he lost the MLA bye-election and was later inducted as an MLC.
Besides him, the 16 other JDS and Congress legislators who joined the BJP, got disqualified, and became MLAs again after contesting in the subsequent by-elections are also demanding portfolios of their choice and fuellingunrest and disrupting governance in the state.
The instability in the state BJP units and the governments run by the party is linkedto the 'rising aspirations' of the 'new Bhakts' who are neither accustomed to the party's stated dictum of 'seva hi sanghathan' nor are patient like trained BJP and RSS workers to await their turn.
The simmering discontent in the first-ever BJP government inTripuralast month has also much to do with the freshly recruited 'outsiders'.Reports of a group of 'dissident' BJP MLAs led by the former health minister and MLA Sudip Roy Barman planning to head over to a resurgent Trinamool Congress Party caused ripples in Delhi. Party General Secretary (org) BL Santosh was rushed there to manage the turn-coats.
Barman, who along with other leaders left the Trinamool to join the BJP in 2017, was dropped by Chief Minister Biplab Deb from the ministry in 2019 with a caution that leaders are but a product of the organisation and should not forget it. Barman and five former MLAs met BJP President J P Nadda last year to complain against Deb.
Interestingly, the roots of the BJP's recent crisis in Tripura can be traced to the BJP's erstwhile 'trouble-shooter' and former party Vice-president Mukul Roy who himself returned to the TMC in West Bengal after Mamta Banerjee won her third election victory in the state.
In its desire for an unbridled expansion across the country, the BJP is gradually losing its projected character as the 'party with a difference' -- the tagline it used effectively when in the opposition and which found resonance with the people.
Asked about the BJP opening its doors to anyone without any checks, a BJP General Secretary said, "that we will see that in the long-run".
(The writer is with The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal. )