Post-foreign trips, the challenges Modi has to tackle

The soul searching on Bihar loss, backlash from party seniors are something the PM has to dwell deep upon

Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces a plethora of challenges when he returns from his UK and Turkey trip at the end of the week — not the least being the clamour within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Bihar Assembly defeat. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is said to have told leaders as senior as LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi to call off their campaign against the party and government.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley reportedly spent more than half-an-hour with Advani on Diwali discussing the tension in the party after the Bihar loss. Four veteran leaders, including Margdarshak Mandal members Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, had issued a stinging statement that the party was being “forced to kowtow to a handful”, its “consensual character has been destroyed”, and that it had been “emasculated” in the last one year.

Jaitley had conceded in interviews given after the Bihar result that Narendra Modi’s charisma did not work in Bihar, but had added that it was not a mistake to make him the face of the party in the campaign. Now, he has been asked, presumably by the PM, to engage with the senior leaders and soften their assault, in partial recognition of the fact that these leaders have been feeling neglected and excluded. However, this is not the whole story.

Members of Parliament from the BJP are just waiting to tear into ministers, party sources say, who are being criticised internally for being inaccessible, unhelpful and generally remote.

Party MP from Ballia, Bharat Singh, had spoken out in the last session of Parliament at a meeting of the parliamentary party when he said the government had no idea how much difficulty MPs were having in implementing its policies on the ground. He had urged ministers to come out of their ivory towers and interact with MPs. More such MPs are getting ready to speak out during the winter session of Parliament.

Interestingly, Buxar (Bihar) MP RK Singh’s statement in the last session that the government had let the party down in Kashmir saw a host of BJP MPs coming to him and shaking his hand after his speech. Shanta Kumar, veteran Himachal Pradesh leader, had struck a similar note.

Party sources say no proper review of any election loss faced by the BJP has taken place since 1984 when Delhi leader Krishan Lal Sharma along with Joshi and others had compiled a voluminous report on the party’s decline.

The BJP won just two seats in the 1984 parliamentary elections. After that, no review of electoral losses has ever been held — not even when the BJP lost all five state Assemblies (1991) under the leadership of LK Advani, a fact that party general secretary Ram Madhav referred to pointedly while reacting to the statement of senior leaders.

It is possible that another committee will be set up to investigate the party’s Bihar loss. But it is Modi who will have to decide who should be on the committee, once he returns from his tour.

RUMBLE OF DISSENT

• RSS is said to have told senior leaders LK Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi to call off their campaign against the party and government
• BJP MPs are waiting to tear into ministers who are being criticised for being inaccessible, unhelpful and generally remote
• Party MP Bharat Singh had spoken out at a parliamentary party meeting saying the government had no idea how much difficulty MPs were having in implementing its policies
• Party sources say no proper review of any election loss has taken place since 1984.