BJP’s popularity will be tested in U.P. next year
Amulya Ganguli
Unlike most other countries where the focus currently is on relaxing the Covid restrictions, the spotlight in India is on several subjects other than the pandemic although they are directly or indirectly related to the outbreak.
As is customary in India, nearly all of them have a political dimension. One is the ongoing row between the centre and the West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, and the other is the controversial central vista project in the heart of the national capital which envisages the construction of a new parliament and the demolition of a number of buildings which contain precious artefacts.
The political tug-of-war between New Delhi and Kolkata has been interpreted as the BJP’s way of trying to get its own back to make up for the humiliating electoral drubbing it suffered at the hands of Mamata’s party in the recent state assembly elections.
Theoretically, the arrest of several Trinamool Congress ministers and associates by the supposedly autonomous central bureau of investigation in a case of malfeasance cannot be traced back to the centre’s instigation. But since few in India believe in the functional independence of the official agencies, the arrests have generally be seen as an instance of the BJP’s political vendetta.
It is clear, therefore, that the battle between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress has not ended with the electoral outcome and that it will continue in other forums for some more time. Among these forums are the judiciary and the governor’s office since the Trinamool Congress regards the governor as the centre’s agent.
One objective of the BJP’s apparent targeting of Mamata is to provoke her to do something injudicious as when she sat in a six-hour dharna (a sit-in protest) in the investigative agency’s office in Kolkata to underline her displeasure and anger over the arrests.
The protests by her supporters at the agency’s office and outside the gubernatorial palace have also been highlighted by the BJP to draw attention to the tense situation in West Bengal where, the party claims, a number of its supporters have been killed by the Trinamool “goons” – 27, according to an RSS apparatchik.
The BJP probably expects that the continuing volatility – “total lawlessness and anarchy”, as the governor has said - will undermine Mamata’s chances of leading the national opposition against the BJP in the run-up to the 2024 general election where the chief minister may be the main challenger to the prime minister.
Considering that the latter’s position has been weakened by what is widely regarded within India and outside as the centre’s mishandling of the Covid situation, the BJP evidently wants to avoid the kind of a stiff challenge which the feisty chief minister is expected to pose.
Apart from the tussle in West Bengal, the centre is facing flak from ordinary people as well as the intelligentsia for what a group of 76 scholars has called an “extravagant project” in the midst of a “devastating pandemic, endangering workers and squandering scarce resources that could be used to save lives”. The opposition, too, has criticized the central vista project, but for the BJP both the statement are nothing but political posturing by its critics.
The BJP apparently expects the second phase of the pandemic to gradually wind down and divert attention from its various failures to fight and contain the disease. But it is probably overlooking the fact that almost every family has suffered in the last few weeks when hospital beds and oxygen were unavailable.
Moreover, the depletion of the vaccine stocks has deprived thousands of the protection which they were seeking and the hopeful recipients will have to wait for a long time before the vaccines are available in sufficient quantities.
None of these travails are likely to be forgotten in a hurry. Nor will the heart-rending sights of scores of funeral pyres burning through the night and hundreds of bodies floating down the river Ganga.
All of this cannot but take a political toll where the BJP is concerned. And it is bound to be a heavy one. The first impact of the popular grief has already been expressed in the U.P. panchayat polls where the Samajwadi Party came out of nowhere to be the front-runner, leaving the BJP behind.
The next test for the BJP will be the assembly elections in the state next year. Having already lost three assembly elections in West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the BJP cannot afford to lose yet another, and especially in U.P , which it regards as its stronghold under the hardline chief minister, Yogi Adityanath.
How important the latter has become in the BJP’s scheme of things is evident from a video which is circulating among the party faithful where the Yogi has been equated with Narendra Modi along with a message about how hard the two are working against the pandemic. The belief that the Yogi is next in line to be the prime minister has been confirmed by the video.
It also shows that the previously redoubtable home minister, Amit Shah, has been downgraded. His fall can be ascribed not only to the BJP’s defeat in West Bengal, but also to the fact that his boast of winning 200-plus seats has been found to be hollow. At the same time, the floating bodies in the Ganga and the abysmal condition of some of the hospitals in U.P. – one of which was shown to be without doctors and nurses – can seal the Yogi’s fate.
