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Snipers target Shah's parachute style

Published On : 10 Nov 2015


New Delhi, (The Telegraph): One morning, Nitin Gadkari, central minister and former BJP president, was set to leave home and fly to Patna to address public meetings. But he was told by a member of Amit Shah's "war room" in the Bihar capital that his campaign for the day was off.

"Gadkariji was stunned because no reasons were given. Before he could seek one, the caller switched off," a Gadkari aide said.

The BJP today officially said the Grand Alliance won because of "social arithmetic" and shielded Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party chief Amit Shah by declaring that "the party collectively wins and collectively loses".


But, behind the scenes, insiders have begun questioning Shah's practice of marshalling "rootless wonders" from Delhi to manage the nuts and bolts of electioneering in states.

Several leaders felt that Shah would have to rethink the strategy of paradropping his "loyalists" on unfamiliar terrain. But it is not clear whether anyone would convey the message to Shah - a clue was available today when all the leaders who spoke to this newspaper insisted that they should not be named in this report.

"If you check the political profile of the important members of the president's core team, you will find that none of them has proved his skill or worth in past elections or worked seriously on the ground. In that respect, unfortunately, our party is fast replicating the Congress, which traditionally rewards anything but merit and hard work," carped a Rajya Sabha MP of RSS provenance from a northern state.

Shah denied himself sleep and leisure for the several weeks he camped in Patna and smaller towns where he put up in grotty guesthouses and hotels. "Nobody is questioning the way in which he slogged. But if he had a more talented team, maybe we could have spared ourselves this ignominy," an insider said.

Asked if this was not another standard complaint in the flurry of finger-pointing that follows any defeat, the source replied: "No, it happened also in Delhi where individuals unfamiliar with its landscape and lanes and bylanes and its demography were deployed by the president."

What had galled the old-timers in Delhi as in Patna was the alleged wide berth the established state leaders were given by the outlanders.

A former Bihar MLA said: "We were regarded as useless people. The Delhi bosses only spoke to two or three state leaders like Sushil Modi and Mangal Pandey and ignored the rest. When that happened, many workers retired to their homes, thinking 'If there is no work for us, we may as well relax and spend time with our families'."

For instance, general secretary Bhupender Yadav was used in the hope that his "surname" would help the BJP court Bihar's Yadavs, a cohesive group that is usually sceptical of the national party.

The soft-spoken Yadav hails from Haryana, studied in Rajasthan and practised law in Delhi but never fought an election. However, he carved a niche as a "backroom" person when he first organised L.K. Advani's 2011 yatra. "He didn't know a thing about Bihar, its dialects, its political dynamics, so he couldn't do his assigned task," a state BJP leader claimed.

Another general secretary and a Shah favourite, Anil Jain, is a surgeon by training. Insiders said his "claim to fame" was facilitating medical treatment for RSS officials in a top-ranking Delhi hospital and later in private nursing homes.

Jain's supposed proximity to the RSS had brought him closer to Ramlal, the BJP general secretary (organisation), also "loaned" by the Sangh, and finally to Shah. The brief given to Jain, also from Haryana, in Patna was to vet media reports and sift the "negative" coverage from the "positive".

Insiders wondered why central minister Ananth Kumar had to stay put by Shah's side for weeks although, like Yadav, he was a designated prabhari (minder).

The BJP followed a tradition of appointing central prabharis from outside the state they were assigned to ensure that they stayed aloof from local politics and took an objective view of disputes.

"That objective is no longer served because many prabharis start promoting local favourites," a source said, refusing to say if Kumar, who hails from Karnataka, was one of them. "You may draw your conclusions," the source said.

Shah also brought in Gujarat Lok Sabha MP C.R. Patil to be the guardian of the Begusarai region for months on end.

The reason? Patil, originally a Maharashtrian and a police constable, was elected from Navsari, a constituency that has a big Bihari population. "He has no great skill in election management because he has been winning his seat thanks to Narendra Modi," a Gujarat MP said. The NDA did not open its account in Begusarai's seven seats.

Like "outsider" Patil, Asish Shelar, Mumbai BJP president, was told to stay grounded in Bihar for weeks. "Nobody knew what exactly he was told to do," a source said.

Photo credit: The Telegrpah







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