It is no secret that civil aviation czar Vijay Mallya is now going from one political leader to another, seeking help in restructuring loans and securing finance for his airline. He met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who gave him a patient hearing but little more — and also met the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) National President, Nitin Gadkari. Or so a Gadkari aide let slip in the course of a conversation with reporters. Gadkari himself denied the meeting, so someone was guilty of terminological inexactitude.
But why would Gadkari refute a meeting? After all, in the party he is known as a reformer, a self-created businessman with a modern outlook who said: “BJP is committed to economic reforms and the fast changing global scenario is helping India play a pro-active role in global recovery and redefining new economic world order” (London, 19 July 2011).
Although the BJP has rejected foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail (and to be sure that alone does not constitute being anti-reform), Gadkari has proved that he really does want to see for himself how the world is changing. He is probably the most cosmopolitan and well-travelled BJP president in history — his record of international travel as president of BJP rivals the prime minister’s. His meeting with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee ahead of the winter session of Parliament saw the meeting of minds of two seasoned men of the world, rising above the politics of worker bees in their respective parties, ready for give and take in the greater interest of the India project.
The thing is: the worker bees are dragging Gadkari down.
As in other parties, so also in the BJP, the president’s word should be the party’s command. But in the Gadkari-led BJP, there is someone to question every move he makes. He didn’t want B S Yeddyurappa moved from the chief ministership of Karnataka — but L K Advani got after him and made him shift the former Karnataka chief minister out. Propitiously, it turned out, because Yeddyurappa was jailed weeks after. Ditto Uttarakhand Chief Minister Nishank who was replaced by B C Khanduri at Sushma Swaraj’s insistence even as Gadkari did his best to resist the change. It is the BJP’s worst-kept secret that Gadkari was less than enthusiastic about Advani’s Rath Yatra. Indeed, his comment at a public forum in Goa, when he was asked what he thought of the Rath Yatra plan, was: “Well, it is one of the many ways available to reach out to the people.”
But lately Gadkari, perhaps tiring of being put upon, is also showing his claws. It was only a passing comment. But everyone noted that his response to a question on the BJP’s next prime minister was: “The BJP’s next prime minister will be from the Lok Sabha.” Gadkari is himself planning to contest the next Lok Sabha election from Nagpur or Wardha and is inviting others to do so as well — especially Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Modi’s options are clear: he can stay in Gujarat or if he wants a bigger role, come to the Centre, in which case, of course, he will have to leave Gujarat. The fact is, however, big a leader Modi might be, he has behaved rather badly with Gadkari, publicly flouting the party president’s authority by not attending a meeting of the party’s national executive on the specious grounds that he was on a “navratri upvaas”. The move came soon after the central party inducted Modi’s bête noire Sanjay Joshi as general secretary. Gadkari supporters are also annoyed that while the party went out on a limb for him in the last session of Parliament, agreeing to the government’s request that inflation, not corruption, be made the central issue in return for judicial and other relief for Modi, instead of being grateful, the Gujarat chief minister opted to prove himself a bigger leader than the party by launching a sadbhavna fast. That made three snubs in three months, and Gadkari had had just enough. So when Modi opted not to attend the national executive meet, Gadkari just dismissed the issue saying the Gujarat chief minister “has some navaratri issues” instead of begging him to attend.
Old-timers say the situation is a little akin to the 1990s when Kalyan Singh was UP chief minister. When the Janadesh Yatra of 1992 was undertaken by Advani, there were several places where Advani had to obey the crowd and cut his speech short because it was Kalyan Singh people wanted to listen to. In 1998, Kalyan Singh delivered 60 Lok Sabha seats to the BJP. Gujarat has only 26 seats.
Gadkari is moving slowly but surely to assert himself in the party. He thinks the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s backing for him will help him. It doesn’t always work that way in the BJP. But keeping everyone guessing can also prove to be good politics.
