Early Times Report
JAMMU, Jan 25: Amit Shah, a confidant of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was on Sunday unanimously elected the BJP president for a full three-year term, retaining the post he has held since the party took power in India in 2014. His election to the highest office in the party was a foregone conclusion. Had it not happened, it would have been a great set back for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. PM Modi, Jaitley and Shah, according to Arun Shourie, constitute that trio that controls the party and runs the administration.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who flew to Chandigarh to receive French President Francois Hollande, was not present at 11 Ashoka Road, when the election was held. But he congratulated Shah, and said he was confident the party "will scale newer heights under his leadership". "Amit bhai combines grassroot-level work and rich organizational experience which will benefit the party immensely," said Modi, who is said to count Shah as one of his most trusted aides.
Can Amit Shah rescue the BJP's sinking ship? It is a not a simple question that one can answer at this point in time. For, it is not 2014, when the anti-Congress or anti-secular wave had gripped the entire nation - a wave which the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi exploited to his own advantage and the result was that the BJP won 282 seats on its own and its allies also performed exceedingly well winning more than 55 seats. All those who won on the BJP tickets and on the tickets of its allies were Hindus, barring three Sikhs from Punjab. 2014 was, in fact, the year of Narendra Modi, and not that of the BJP. Had Modi not led the campaign from the front, the position of the BJP would have been totally different and it would not have won so many seats.
The good show put up by the BJP in the Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu province was also because of the Modi factor. Except for Haryana, the BJP didn't win the required number of seats in any of the States in 2014. In fact, except in Haryana, the vote share of the BJP fell considerably in all these States in the Lok Sabha elections. For example, in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP got 32.5 per cent of the total votes polled in Jammu and Kashmir, but six months later, in the Assembly elections, the BJP's vote share fell by a whopping ten per cent. In Jharkhand, the BJP's vote share fell by 13 per cent.
Amit Shah took over as party president after Narendra Modi took over as the Prime Minister in May 2014 and the Assembly elections in these four States were held before the beginning of 2015.
The year 2015 was a very bad year for the BJP in terms of electoral politics. In January 2015, the newly-founded Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) inflicted a crushing defeat on the BJP in the Delhi Assembly elections. The AAP won 67 out of 70 seats and the BJP could win only 3, as against its earlier tally of 32. The Congress couldn't even open its account and this happened for the first time. The BJP's extremely poor performance was despite the fact the PM Modi addressed nine election rallies, as also despite the fact that the BJP had won all the seven Lok Sabha seats in May 2014.
In November, the BJP suffered another ignominious defeat and it happened in Bihar. It could win only 53 seats, as against its earlier tally of 91 seats. PM Modi had addressed as many as 29 election rallies and the areas where he addressed these rallies didn't elect any BJP candidate. Even the almost 2-month-long presence of Amit Shah and almost a dozen of Union Ministers, besides BJP leaders from across the country and RSS cadres in Bihar, didn't help the BJP to even save those seats it held in the Assembly between 2010 and 2015. This was considered the personal defeat of PM Modi and Amit Shah, with senior party leaders including LK Advani, MM Joshi, Yashwant Sinha and Shanta Kumar demanding action against those who organized the BJP's election campaign in Bihar. Significantly, Advani and Joshi, unlike others, on Sunday didn't go to the party office to congratulate Amit Shah for his re-elevation to the post of president.
In between, the BJP miserably lost the local bodies' and panchayat elections as well as by-elections. The BJP suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Congress in the rural Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka in the Local bodies' and panchyat elections. The BJP got defeated even in the Banaras, which is being represented by the Prime Minister in the Lok Sabha. The BJP also suffered a massive defeat at the hands of the Congress in the by-elections held in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand. In Madhya Pradesh, the Congress wrest the Ratlam Lok Sabha seat from the BJP and in Jharkhand, the Congress wrested the Lohargada Assembly seat from the BJP-supported candidate. All the States, barring UP and Karnataka, were the BJP ruled States.
The year 2016 also didn't bring cheers for the BJP. In the just-held Zila Parishad elections in Himachal Pradesh, the BJP suffered reverses. The Congress, which is ruling Himachal Pradesh, put up a very good show.
The fact of the matter is that the BJP's support-base is shrinking and shrinking very fast all across the country and it is under this situation that Amit Shah has to function. The task is very difficult, as almost all the non-BJP outfits and formations have joined hands against the BJP in general and Prime Minister Modi in particular. |
