BJP’s trauma

The trouble in the Rajasthan unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is an uncanny reflection of the some of the questions confronting the party’s central leadership.

The demand that former chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia should take responsibility for the defeat in the Lok Sabha and assembly elections is sensible enough, but it is something that the BJP president Rajnath Singh will find difficult to accede to because his position is not very different from that of Raje herself. Raje’s supporters were indeed saying as much when they trooped to Delhi to meet LK Advani, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

It was understandable that Advani avoided the embarrassment of being the judge in the matter because he too is facing the same demand from the party’s ideological mentor, the RSS and other detractors and rivals in the party. Rajnath Singh and Advani are both on weak ground when asked to arbitrate in the Raje issue.

They are aware that they lack the moral legitimacy to ask Raje to quit her posts, owning up responsibility for the election defeat, when they had brushed aside similar demands that they should take moral responsibility for the defeat in Lok Sabha election and step down from their positions.

The BJP has not yet found a satisfactory way of coming to terms with the poll debacle. Party leaders who led the unsuccessful campaign have not been able to make transparent confessions about their failure and that has left the rank and file fuming and fretting.

Party members are confused and uncertain about the future of the party.There is also the dilemma, and a genuine one at that, that the BJP has not thrown up a second rung of leaders who are capable of taking over from the present party bosses.

It is this leadership vacuum that makes it difficult to push the existing top brass out. The BJP’s embarrassment is all the more acute because the party has prided itself on being different from the Congress which was tied to the apron-strings of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. It finds itself unable to throw out leaders who have failed to deliver and replace them with new ones.

That should set the party thinking about what has gone wrong. It is quite likely that they are not attracting new leaders because of their crusty ideology. Once again it seems that every step it takes, leads the BJP to one more almost existential dilemma.