It is unusual, to say the least, for the general secretary of a political party to have such serious differences with his party president that he is required to kiss and make up with him. That is what has happened in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Arun Jaitley, who began his career as a student activist and is today arguably one of the most powerful second-rung leaders in the BJP, met party President Rajnath Singh on Thursday in an apparent bid to resolve differences.
In the interim, Jaitley stopped attending meetings of the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC), objecting to the presence at the meetings of a party colleague who was involved in candidate selection for Assam. In the 2004 general elections, this had happened to Delhi BJP leader Vijay Goel: When his advice on Delhi was not heeded, he too refused to attend CEC meetings. The party metaphorically shrugged its shoulders and went ahead with seat distribution without him.
Arun Jaitley is the party general secretary in charge of Bihar for which one set of candidates has already been selected, though he did not attend the meetings. What that says about the BJP — that it can decide seats in the absence of the general secretary overseeing the state — is another matter. How can the president of a party earn the respect of his lieutenants when he keeps signalling to them that he has no use for them?
Jaitley’s record in election management — which he has been doing since 2003 — is mixed. He has never contested and won a Lok Sabha election himself. In states under his charge, that have had an erstwhile BJP presence, such as Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, Jaitley has almost invariably delivered a victory by influencing both the choice of candidates and the campaign. In Karnataka, he took charge when the party was on the ascendant and needed just that one push to win on its own. This happened in 2007.
But in states where the BJP has very little to call its own, West Bengal, for instance, the BJP has stayed pretty much where it was in electoral terms, although Jaitley did the best he could after he was appointed to oversee the Assembly election in 2006. In the 2001 Assembly election, the BJP got 5.1 per cent of the vote but got no seats. In 2006, the seats were still zero but the vote share went down to 1.93.
Jaitley’s spectacularly-managed election was the BJP’s tally in the 2008 Assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir. In 2002, when the Assembly election were last held, the BJP won just one seat. In 2008, it won 11. This was because the party recognised the Amarnath Shrine Board agitation, which was run from Jammu, as an issue of discrimination against Jammu rather than a religious matter. It was Jaitley who was responsible for giving this edge to the campaign.
In states where the BJP is the junior partner, like Bihar and Punjab, Jaitley has managed allies realistically, prompting many in the party to grumble that he has favoured the allies over the BJP. In fact, this is just the recognition of the BJP’s strengths and weaknesses without getting clouded by sentimentality.
The BJP could have used Jaitley as an asset. It is bending over backwards to prove he is an obstruction.