The recent rejig of mammoth Team BJP conducted and announced by the party’s national president, J P Nadda seems to be a massive exercise. Keeping in mind the crucial Assembly polls in several states and the Lok Sabha in 2024, the ‘Saffron Might’ has prepared its new team, it seems keeping the permutations and combinations in mind. Incidentally, the rejig came on a day when Union Home Minister Amit Shah was in Rameshwaram to launch a book on former president APJ Abdul Kalam, an icon of the party’s Pasmanda outreach.
Of late, a closer look at the ‘Saffron Might’ especially in Uttar Pradesh may reveal that BJP has been continuously reaching out to a section of the Muslim population through meetings, mostly focused on Pasmanda Muslims, who are from Dalit and other backward class communities.
It is being looked at as an attempt to strengthen its ongoing outreach among Muslim Pasmanda communities. With an aim towards this, the BJP on Saturday had appointed former Aligarh Muslim University vice-chancellor Tariq Mansoor as one of its vice-presidents.
Importance of Mansoor: During the CAA and NRS demonstrations, He (Mansoor) was instrumental in steering the AMU, one of the hotbeds of protests, on a “middle path”, and later closely working with the RSS on its project to promote the teachings of Dara Shikoh on peaceful Hindu-Muslim coexistence that was in contradiction to his brother Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s way of functioning.
Mansoor was also elected to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council, the fourth Muslim picked by the BJP for the post in the last few years.
Mansoor is from Aligarh (in Uttar Pradesh), where Muslims constitute about 19% of the state’s electorate, and have a pretty sizable presence in at least 30 Lok Sabha seats, out of which they play a major role in deciding the outcome in at least 15 to 20 constituencies.
It may be noted that Mansoor had impressed the Sangh’s top brass by his Dar Shikoh project by effectively using the AMU’s Persian department to translate much of the concerned work on inter-faith dialogue and project him as an ideal for the Muslim community.
Bringing back the veterans: The Saffron party has toiled hard to prepare the new lengthy team and give it adequate time to perform before the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha.
Learning from harsh realities in Karnataka’s Assembly elections outcome, the party brought in former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister, Raman Singh into the limelight as Nadda on Saturday announced the names of party’s national office-bearers with two former chief ministers — Raman Singh and Vasundhara Raje — from the poll-bound states of Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan being appointed as national vice-presidents.
It is clear that the BJP may have also learnt its lesson from the Congress’s stunning victory and the recent drubbing it received in Karnataka polls.
The party realised the cost of sidelining veterans, including BS Yeddyurappa and Jagadish Shettar. Similar was being witnessed in Rajasthan where the two-time Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje was being treated prior to this some time back.
However, the party’s central party leadership was worried that further sidelining Vasundhara Raje may lead to an encore of its Karnataka drubbing in Rajasthan, where elections are due.
Raje camp had also maintained that the former chief minister had been sidelined for the past several years by the party’s central leadership as she was not made a part of high-level consultations concerning crucial decisions in the party, especially regarding Rajasthan.
A miffed Raje was also conspicuous by her absence in several of the meetings that were helmed by the former state BJP president Satish Poonia in Jaipur but were often present at meetings held in Delhi.
Jats ignored? The BJP did not induct any Jat leader from Uttar Pradesh. All communities, more or less, Muslims, Thakurs, Brahmins, Vaishyas, backward have found berths in the rejigged team, only Jats are missing.
Though Jats comprise 2 per cent of the state’s 20-crore population, they form around 30 to 35 per cent of the population in 25 constituencies in western UP, which is a matter of fact! And political analysts are closely looking into this aspect and making their own inferences from this decision.
What about W Bengal? Dilip Ghosh from the West Bengal unit of the BJP is no longer the national vice-president. His ‘surprise’ exit, of course, raises several questions. With Ghosh’s exit, the Bengal state unit’s national representation is closely monitored by political analysts.
Even as the Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, had announced some time back that the party was eyeing 35 LS seats in West Bengal…with Ghosh’s exit and the state unit’s representation at the national level creates some anxious queries. Also, with the pre and post poll violence during the 2021 Assembly elections and now the panchayat elections and the arrival of numerous fact-finding teams to West Bengal, what is BJP’s game plan for West Bengal given the fact that Ghosh is no longer the national vice-president?
Also, at a time when the state party unit was preparing a ground for the central leadership to take on the TMC government, such a ‘vacuum’ at the top of the party’s state unit as far as national representation is concerned will certainly raise several eyebrows. Also, one has to consider the fact that the TMC is playing a major role in the Opposition conglomerate called INDIA. Well things will be clear in the coming days.
Meanwhile, BJP’s mammoth exercise to rejig its team clearly reveals how serious the ‘Saffron Might’ is about the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls and the party also intends to give the new team enough time to prepare and plan their strategy for the 2024 ‘Big Fight’.
(Writer is Senior Journalist and former Senior Associate Editor, OHeraldo, Goa)
