2009 saw BJP hit by internal strife, blame game

BJP was confronted by internal squabbles and blame-game and underwent a change in the top leadership after it faced an upheaval following the debacle in the Lok Sabha polls under L K Advani in 2009.
       
Though BJP had lost power in Rajasthan and got a drubbing in Delhi in December 2008, it dusted itself up for the big battle by projecting 82-year-old Advani as its prime ministerial candidate and attempted to take on the Congress-led UPA on issues like good governance, development and security.
       
But Advani failed to arouse the masses and BJP, which did not get the benefit of campaigning by an ailing AB Vajpayee, was reduced to 116 seats from 138 it had won in the 14th Lok Sabha.

This defeat at the hands of Congress led to a bitter struggle among the second rung for control of the party as Advani tried to walk into the sunset, asking his party colleagues to choose a new Leader of Opposition (LoP). They managed to persuade him to stay.

Later, when the RSS reportedly asked Advani to find a successor asserting it was time a young leadership took reins of the party, he publicly said he had been chosen as LoP for a full term. A way out was found towards the end of the year when the post of Chairman of BJP Parliamentary Party was created for him and Sushma Swaraj became LoP.
       
52-year-old Nitin Gadkari, an RSS choice, succeeded Rajnath Singh as BJP president in December.

Rajnath, who occupied the top post for four years, ended his tenure amid infighting in the party.
    
The faction led by Rajnath and the camp close to Advani consisting of Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, M Venkaiah Naidu and Ananth Kumar fought an internecine battle to control the party.
    
The blame-game that began after the Lok Sabha defeat included criticism of the manner in which party tickets were distributed to the way the campaign was run and even the projection of Advani as the prime ministerial candidate and making him the main focus of the campaign.

After the Lok Sabha poll debacle, where BJP was reduced to 116 from its 2004 tally of 138, the media had a field day as the mud-slinging spilled out in the open.

A number of letters, written by party veterans like Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and Pyarelal Khandelwal, targeting the party top brass for the dismal performance and asking for a complete overhaul of the party surfaced.
   
While Sinha quit all party posts, including that of vice-president, Shourie called party president Rajnath Singh "humpty dumpty" and criticised the attitude of some BJP leaders.
    
Meanwhile, leaders like Maneka Gandhi criticised some party colleagues for directing the whole election campaign from air-conditioned rooms instead of going to the field.

Maneka's target, as well as those of several grieving leaders, was Arun Jaitley as he had supervised the whole election management from choosing candidates, looking for allies to running the poll campaign.
   
Maneka was disgruntled also due to lack of party support for her son, Varun when he was in the eye of a storm for an alleged hate speech against the minority community in his constituency Pilibhit. He had to spend a few days in jail.
   
Jaitley was later appointed Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha by Advani, a deed many read as a "reward" despite the poll drubbing. Advani also appointed Swaraj as Deputy Leader of BJP in Lok Sabha.
    
The expulsion of External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh from the party at the BJP Chintan Baithak in Shimla for authoring  "Jinnah-India, Partition, Independence" in which he said the Pakistan founder was demonised in India generated a lot of heat.

He also blamed Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel for partition.
   
Even after his removal from the BJP, Jaswant Singh was in the news when he refused to relinquish the post of Chairman of
Parliament's prestigious Public Accounts Committee. He finally stepped down on his own towards the end of the year.

Shimla's chintan baithak would also be remembered for the leaking of the Bal Apte Committee report on what went wrong
during the Lok Sabha elections. While the party issued formal denials about the existence of such a document and even of the committee, party insiders said it had been discussed.