BJP under Modi-Shah gets battle ready for 2019

By Satish Misra. Dated: 8/18/2017 11:12:14 AM

Now that important constitutional posts are occupied by persons with active RSS background, the BJP has sounded the bugle for the electoral battles beginning from assembly election in Gujarat later this year to the Lok Sabha polls in 2019.
Leading from the front Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ruling party chief Amit Shah are firing on all cylinders and are gunning for the opposition both within the BJP as well as outside in the country. Agenda of the battle or should we call it a war is ready. Goals are defined and enemies have been identified.
Modi-Shah has silenced the opposition in the BJP into submission by conveying message to MLA's in states and to MPs in New Delhi that their political future is going to be determined by the leader. Shah has been touring states and has been telling the legislators and all popularly elected members of the party that they are at the mercy of the single leader of the party and dissent and indiscipline have no place in today's dispensation.
Shah said that since the party under Modi's leadership makes them win elections, they must take party's directives seriously otherwise there is always a long queue of ticket aspirants at the time of elections. It was a clear threat. The Prime Minister told the party MPs at the BJP parliamentary party meeting recently that with the coming of Shah into the Rajya Sabha, they are going to be monitored for their performance that in turn would decide their political fate in 2019 or their respective reentry into the upper house.
The BJP has been denying party tickets to sitting legislators in the recently held elections. The BJP dropped over 40 per cent of sitting members even in the local bodies elections that were held recently including in Delhi Metropolitan elections.
On the other hand, Modi and Shah have begun to write another narrative on corruption telling countrymen that while opposition was corrupt there was no corruption in the BJP. All chief ministers of the BJP ruled states are honest and it was the opposition that was maligning chief ministers like Shivraj Singh Chauhan in Madhya Pradesh, Raman Singh in Chattisgarh, Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan or for that matter Manohar Lal Khattar.
With national and regional print and audio-visual media already under control, new narrative is gaining popular traction. Even if some news of corruption of the BJP leaders is carried in any media forum, BJP inspired social media goes on overdrive to dismiss them as conspiracies of frustrated opposition.
Modi is incorruptible and every leader standing with him is also honest as in the case of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who deserted the grand alliance and joined the BJP to remain in power in the state. There is a total absence of inquiry either in the media or elsewhere about the corrupt ways of the BJP and its leaders. Nobody is questioning as how or with what funds mega rallies and public meetings are being organized by the ruling party. Since decision making process has become highly centralized and all important economic decisions of the Modi government are taken by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), information about wheeling-dealing does not easily come out but this does not mean that there is no corruption. While earlier, money used to flow for influencing decisions on economic issues or framing of economic policies at different ministries and government departments, now all decisions are conveyed to respective ministers and they like rubber stamps approve them.
In the recently held election to three Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat, MLAs were paid huge amounts. Amit Shah was hell bent on defeating Congress candidate Ahmad Patel's reelection to the upper house for the fifth time in succession and deployed all possible fair and foul means to take a personal revenge on Congress president Sonia Gandhi's political secretary.
Does anyone has question Nitish Kumar, who is not tired of repeating his mantra of "zero tolerance of corruption" as how he has sent one of the richest leader Mahendra Prasad alias King Mahendra to the upper house on the party ticket. King Mahendra's credibility is questionable and there are allegations that he buys his entry to the upper house. He has been in parliament for over three decades and he is JD(U) MP for the second time.
Opposition leaders are being intimated and forced into submission by using central agencies like the CBI, ED and Income Tax. Former Gujarat Chief Minister Shankarsinh Vaghela, who led a rebellion against the Congress, was facing a CBI probe into the alleged corruption in the sale of the land of Textile mills during his days as the Textile Minister in the UPA-I government.
Distancing of the Nationalist Congress Party from the 18-party opposition alliance is yet another case of intimidation. Praful Patel, one of the closest colleagues of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, it is said, has been the victim of the same game. His alleged wrong doing during his days as Civil Aviation Minister in the UPA government are under scrutiny and this was enough to ensure that two NCP MLAs voted for the BJP candidate in Gujarat Rajya Sabha election.
Road to victory in 2019 is clear now as critical voices from two constitutional positions that of the President and Vice President have been replaced by RSS followers.
Former President Mukherjee criticized the Modi government sometimes directly and many a times indirectly on growing intolerance and rising case of mob lynching but he was neither questioned nor confronted by either the Prime Minister or any minister because he is a Hindu Brahmin.
Playing to the gallery to please the party's core constituency, the Prime Minister shed grace and abandoned well defined convention of not criticizing constitutional positions to attack the outgoing Vice President Hamid Ansari for his remark that minorities like the Muslims were living in fear.
Attack on Ansari is the part of the agenda of the election that is going to contested not on economic issues but on Ram Temple in Ayodhya, removal of Article 370 guaranteeing special status to Jammu and Kashmir. Jingoism and ultra nationalism are two platforms on which next elections are going to be fought by the BJP.
*(Dr. Satish Misra is a Veteran Journalist & Research Associate with Observer Research Foundation).
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