Sanjay Kaul is one of the rising stars of the Delhi state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He is currently a party spokesperson but is tipped to play a pivotal role in the BJP. Kaul formed People's Action in 2002, which took up civic issues. In 2005, he led 2,000 Resident Welfare Associations in Delhi to force the government to roll back the power tariff hike. Kaul spoke to Archis Mohan about the challenges that face BJP in Delhi. Edited excerpts:
What are the challenges in front of the BJP in a likely scenario of Assembly elections in the state in the near future?
One of the first things we will have to work on is to recalibrate our strategy, to divest the Lok Sabha results from the Assembly reality. To that extent, we will have to evaluate the strategies of our opponents, look at new vote configurations that might have come up, look at the realities of voter positions on various issues and then integrate these on to larger issues, build them up among constituencies and be able to sell the idea that we have better, sustainable and believable solutions.
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We would also need to make a very sensible selection of people who intend to represent us. I think quality of candidates is coming into focus dramatically now.
The third and the biggest issue is the question of the BJP's cumulative leadership potential and we need to be able to present a credible alternative than what our opponents offer. We have seen that the last two elections have been fought on the plank of leadership.
The Delhi BJP has several leaders. It competes with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that has Arvind Kejriwal who has no rivals. Congress has also projected Arvinder Singh Lovely as its leader. Would the BJP project a fresh face?
There is no denying, of course, that the last few elections have been fought on the plank of strong leadership. Most parties, except the Congress, have followed that dictum. But that decision can only be taken after an objective assessment of our chances and strategies.
Sometimes, strategy can demand you to project a candidate as your chief minister. Sometimes strategy can demand that you deal with the question of leadership only after the election is over. Everything depends on the need of the hour. It may seem more prudent in the sense of internal requirement to defer the decision (on projecting a CM candidate). In either case, it should be strategy-led and not made out of any compulsion.
You played an important part in devising the electoral strategy in Delhi in the Lok Sabha elections. What has changed between the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections and the Lok Sabha polls?
I have no doubt in my mind that Narendra Modi's candidature as our prime ministerial candidate created a momentum that increased our vote share in Delhi as well. But locally, I worked on a micro strategy that involved engaging with booth-level data. So, I strategised a plan that focused on areas we lost marginally. My simple calculation was that if we could hold on to booths we won marginally and recover the ones we lost marginally, we would be able to impact almost 70 to 75 per cent of the booths in Delhi. I am glad to report that we won 85 per cent booths. The cumulative effect of attention to the smallest unit is tremendous and far greater than you would possibly imagine.
We need to evaluate what factors were in place for the Lok Sabha elections and whether the same factors will be working in the Assembly polls, and only then can we forge a new strategy to go forward.
There have been reports that some within Delhi BJP are keen that the party forms a government with the help of dissatisfied AAP or Congress MLAs.
There is no denying that this is within the realm of possibility. You do understand both the losing parties, the Congress and AAP, have legislators who are nervous about their future. Many of them are trying to see if they can sustain or survive without going into an election. Some of them have made attempts to approach some of our legislators and party leaders.
The question isn't of whether this was discussed or not within the BJP, but of decision. It remains to be seen whether the party would like to take the mandate of the people or would find it prudent to forge some sort of an alliance. But the important point is whether the alliance would be long-term, would it be sustainable, is it going to be well-received by the people and if that isn't the case, I doubt if the party would go for that and would decide to seek popular vote.
What can the BJP learn from AAP?
The party has to present itself as a viable alternative to all such movements. We know that we have a young population. We know they are very restive. There are very serious problems in all aspects of human development - health, education, jobs and so on. If you do not have practical doable solutions for these things, you will end up alienating a lot of people.
Governance is different from activism. Activism is demand, while government is supply. There is this common adage of what gets you to power isn't what keeps you in power and I think AAP discovered that to its discomfiture very quickly. But it is also important to have an alternative model to be able to credibly prove to people that we have the solutions.
The BJP has the experience and the depth, and now it also has a strong government at the Centre, runs municipalities in Delhi and, therefore, it can bridge the gap that we have found in governance all along. We have the opportunity to offer a seamless government, led by a trustworthy, credible, workable and, more importantly, executionable plan.
How much would recent decisions like the rail fare hike and a possibly sharp price rise in the coming months hurt BJP's chances in Delhi?
It would be naive to imagine that these won't. But it is the job of the leadership to articulate the importance of what we are doing and to raise the bar, and attention to bigger things. The real challenge is to articulate a vision for Delhi.
Delhi, unfortunately, doesn't belong to anybody if you really break it down. You find Mumbaikars who fight for Mumbai, you find Kolkatans who think of Kolkata… but there is a deficit of this feeling in Delhi. The reality remains that nobody has been able to sell the idea of Delhi. This is what we need to do.
What is your vision for Delhi? How will the idea of Delhi come about?
If Delhi has to remain the capital of India, then it should have the indices of a capital. It should not be called the rape capital of the country. It shouldn't have 50 per cent of its people living in abject conditions; it shouldn't have protests on electricity tariff every year. You cannot have an urban transport mechanism where you have more new cars registered than childbirths every day. We cannot have a public transport system that isn't trusted. Our health system is only aimed at supplying health to the rich, a river that is reduced to a drain and is a source of pain and disease rather than solace and calmness. You cannot have a capital with anomalies of this sort.
We need to work on four or five things together. There is neither enough time nor is there peoples' patience to work on one.
