Naidu: Playing a good captain's role

The BJP chief is getting used to having his way

When M Venkaiah Naidu took over the party as president in July 2002, the expectation was that he would last a year and LK Advani would have to be drafted to prepare the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for a general election.

Within weeks of taking over the party, Naidu let it be known that he was a man in a hurry.

He chopped and changed the party ruthlessly, conveyed to the ministers that they would have to consider themselves subordinate to the organisation and that they had to contribute to it in the way that Naidu saw fit.

Ministers reported to the BJP office and stayed there by rotation at least once a month, addressing partymen's problems and apprehensions.

Some ministers were made to resign and were told it was the party that would test their mettle. Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitely were brought to the party in 2002.

Pramod Mahajan joined it (resigning from the government) in January 2003. This is the team that the BJP is going to rely upon now to lead the party to victory.

If credit has to be given for the BJP's victory in the Assembly elections, credit has to be given not just to Naidu but also to his three front-line team members, individually and severally.

A good captain is one who gives his team the autonomy to decide strategy. A Pramod Mahajan or an Arun Jaitely would have thought up creative strategies for victory anywhere, but in a party like the Congress, might not have been allowed to carry them out. It is Naidu who gave them a free hand.

That the team would romp home to victory was clear from the earlier by-elections.

In Maharashtra, the BJP-Shiv Sena won the Solapur Lok Sabha seat in September, earlier held by Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde largely on account of the choice of the candidate, Pratapsinh Mohite Patil, brother of current Deputy Chief Minister Vijaysinh Mohite Patil.

The plan to field a Maratha against a Congress candidate who was a non-Maratha, ensured all Maratha votes regardless of party lines, fell in the BJP kitty. This was Mahajan's game plan.

In the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, it was clear that Uma Bharti endorsed the development line that Arun Jaitely proposed as a campaign issue.

Hindutva might have come easier to the BJP as a poll plank, and Uma Bharti would have been much more at ease with it. But Jaitely not only suggested it but also engaged Chief Minister Digvijay Singh in duels on it, marshalling intellectual arguments for a reality every Madhya Pradesh resident was familiar with.

It was in the urban middle class drawing rooms that the Madhya Pradesh battle was won most decisively.

It was Rajnath Singh's efforts that led to a seamless no-contest victory for the Chhattisgarh chief ministership. Few knew the bitter war for the post that was raging internally in the BJP.

The only visible element was the crossing over of BJP MP PR Khuntay to the Congress. But the tribal versus non-tribal battle had started much before the BJP had thought about victory.

So it was not just the victory in Chhattisgarh but the battle after the victory that Rajnath Singh helped the BJP win.

It is this team that is telling the party that an early election will help the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) come back to power because Atal Bihari Vajpayee's USP (unique sales proposition) is at its pinnacle right now.

Naidu is getting used to having his way and could ram home this decision as well. But he would do well to watch his back. Early successes can only mean bigger failures.