Drumbeats accompanied BJP chief Rajnath Singh’s announcement in Goa on Sunday that Gujarat CM Narendra Modi will head the party’s campaign committee for the next Lok Sabha election. But those who sat alongside Mr Singh — Ananth Kumar, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and M. Venkaiah Naidu — wore a sombre look. Some among them may have genuinely supported the idea of Mr Modi leading the campaign, and some were railroaded under RSS pressure. (The narrative of pressure from “party workers” is a euphemism for RSS pressure as so-called BJP workers are really RSS cadres wearing their clothes inside out, and this is a poorly kept secret.) But no matter what their personal predilections, the party’s top echelons appeared conscious that a decision of some moment had been made with the leadership divided down the middle.
This was exemplified by the iconic Lal Krishna Advani, who had led the Ayodhya campaign that helped significantly raise the BJP’s Lok Sabha tally, and several others staying away from the Goa meet. Naturally, the BJP president took no media questions. Of course, Mr Modi has simply been made chairman of the campaign committee for the Lok Sabha election. At least on paper this means Mr Singh can still seek to persuade Mr Advani that there could be someone else, or perhaps a committee, to campaign for the clutch of states that go to the polls just before 2014 sets in.
Having two separate campaign committees is a thought attributed to Mr Advani, but it’s not clear if the BJP’s grand old man will be agreeable now when all names were not announced simultaneously in order not to privilege a particular individual. He is likely to worry that if a deeply divisive figure like Mr Modi takes hold, his words will affect the Assembly polls too, rendering an election group for the state polls superfluous.
The BJP’s allies like the JD(U) may pretend that the BJP’s choice of its campaign committee head is an internal party matter. But the BJP’s own view is clear. If the party wins sufficient seats, Mr Modi will be pitched forward as its choice for PM. To beat the argument that prospective allies may stay away if Mr Modi were PM candidate, the cynical BJP view is that if the party’s tally is high enough, the allies will come anyway.
This is the “realpolitik” approach. But there is a déja vu that is hard to shut out — Chandra Shekhar’s face fell when, in late 1989, Devi Lal announced Vishwanath Pratap Singh’s name for PM in Parliament’s Central Hall. Right there began the excavation of the incoming V.P. Singh government.