Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, along with L K Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, constituted the BJP?s, and its predecessor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh?s, original triumvirate. Advani announced at the BJP?s 1995 ?Mumbai Maha-adhiveshan? that Vajpayee would be the party?s prime ministerial candidate. Riding on the ?Ab ki bari Atal Bihari? slogan, Vajpayee went on to become PM. Shekhawat?s ascendance was, however, far more significant for the saffron brotherhood. With his stint as the country?s vice-president, the RSS thought that its philosophy won the legitimacy it had always craved.
When Shekhawat?s shot at the presidential post misfired, he relocated to his home turf of Rajasthan. A quintessential Indian politician, he was, however, loath to see his fief slide into the hands of his prot?g?-turned-rival Vasundhara Raje, seen to be a dynamic chief minister and a prominent second-rung leader in the party, though her equations with other state leaders were less than perfect. Shekhawat?s uprising, then, had Rajasthan as the epicentre. With the party unlikely to bend over backwards to please the patriarch, the problem may fester for a while. But it is likely to blow over sooner or later.
Bhairon Singh Shekhawat is not the problem for L K Advani?s Mission 2009. The BJP must worry about more substantive issues on the eve of parliamentary polls. With the RSS reconciled to the BJP?s autonomy in policy decisions, the party can now work out a common minimum agenda that gets the approval of its allies. The internal problems in the BJP, however, appear far from over.
While Advani?s leadership is undisputed in the party and the NDA alliance, the ongoing turf war in the second-rung leaders can only bode ill for the party entering election mode.
Among other issues, the Congress?s bid to usurp the ?security plank? has set off alarm bells in the BJP. While it was considered a given in the past, the BJP has been calling itself a ?nationalist party? in all its recent pronouncements and articulations. For the record, the party has asked the UPA government to spell out its blueprint to tame Pakistan for engineering terror strikes in this country.
Two, with the economic meltdown and crises like the Satyam debacle resulting in job losses by the thousands, the BJP is set to make economic security one of its main election planks. It hopes it will strike a chord with the middle classes. Along with this, the right to livelihood, that has yielded handsome dividends in states like Karnataka and Chhattisgarh, is set to find a prominent mention in the party?s charter.
Three, with elections hardly four months away, and the youth constituting the bulk of the electorate, the BJP is trying hard to match up to a far more youthful Congress. While Advani?s portal was initially greeted with a lot of scepticism, it has generated a fair amount of response in the last four-odd months. With more than 1,500 volunteers listed since its launch, Team Advani is working out ways to purposefully engage them for his campaign in the coming months.
Four, the BJP?s quest for allies is not yielding the expected results. With Advani often saying that elections are an aggregate of local elections, the BJP knows that allies would be key to Mission 2009. While some allies are expected to join the camp after elections, some like Ajit Singh?s RLD?that had committed itself to the alliance?are said to be dithering.
Five, the party must work out how best to use Narendra Modi during the election campaign. Whether it?s the national security plank, or the good governance agenda, candidate selection strategy or employing him as a star campaigner, Modi?s imprint will be visible in the party?s strategy.
Six, the party?s real concerns stem from Uttar Pradesh, and Pakistan. There are no signs whatsoever of a recovery in UP, a state that accounts for as many as 80 seats in the Lok Sabha. More importantly, after the Congress-led UPA government?s twin legislations to fight terror, if the diplomatic initiatives help the country in winning back custody of someone like Maulana Masood Azhar?exchanged in lieu of the hijacked passengers in Kandahar?the BJP may have to get back to the drawing board for Mission 2014.