BJP Gets Youngest President

Nitin Gadkari has been appointed the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), succeeding Rajnath Singh whose term got over in November 2009. The 52-year-old Gadkari became the youngest party president, heralding the BJP’s first step toward ushering in a generational transition in its leadership. Gadkari’s appointment came a day after the party veteran L.K. Advani stepped down as Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, handing over baton to Sushma Swaraj. A special slot of chairman of the BJP Parliamentary Party was created by amending the party constitution and Advani became its first incumbent. Arun Jaitley was also renominated as the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

Coming to Helm of Affairs
Hailing from Nagpur, Gadkari also happens to be the first party president from Maharashtra. He has been a public works minister in Maharashtra from 1995 to 1999 and has also been heading the party’s State unit since November 2004. He takes charge at a time when the party is trying to restructure itself after suffering a setback in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. Indications of a generational change were available over the past few months, particularly when Mohan Bhagwat took over as the new chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Giving an inkling of the RSS thinking, he hinted at the possibility of younger leaders coming to the helm of affairs in the BJP.
Gadkari is virtually unknown in Delhi and other parts of the country. However, in Maharashtra, he is a familiar figure. He has the reputation of being a man who can get things done. Significantly, he has constructed the seamless Mumbai-Pune express highway at half of the quoted price when he was the state’s PWD minister in the BJP-Shiv Sena coalition government from 1995 to 1999. Another feather in his cap was his successful venture in getting as many as 55 flyovers constructed for Mumbai. He also got an international airport built in Nagpur.

The Road Man
Gadkari sat with former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he was leading the NDA government and drew the map of the Prime Minister’s ambitious National Highway Project. So much so that he has acquired the nomenclature of “Road Man”. If anything, this is the most noticeable change from the Vajpayee-Advani era, and one that can detract from the BJP’s vote-catching abilities. It is reasonable to ask if the present changes are fated to be of a stop-gap nature.
Several BJP leaders in the states, particularly those of the caliber of Narendra Modi — who is seen by a wide swathe in the party as the natural leader of the saffron political matrix in the country, notwithstanding his severe limitations in terms of acceptability to a wide arc of people — are apt to get ideas as the next general election approaches.

Exit Route for Advani
However, there can, be no comparison between Advani’s new position as the chairman of the BJP Parliamentary Party — which is meant to guide him into retirement in the expectation that he won’t get political — and the identical post Sonia Gandhi occupies in the Congress. Sonia Gandhi is the fulcrum of power in her party, and in that capacity the force that sustains the UPA government. Sushma Swaraj takes Advani’s place as the BJP’s chief in Parliament, and will thus be the new Leader of the Opposition. Her one noteworthy attribute is that she is a strong public speaker in her mother tongue, Hindi. The other key change, of course, is the naming of Nitin Gadkari as the next BJP chief, replacing Rajnath Singh.
The RSS was forced to accept the principle of an honorable exit route for Advani. The post of chairman which was given to the veteran leader fits uneasily into any organizational chart. If he plays his cards well, Advani could emerge as the primary moral authority in the BJP, almost rivaling the ideological ombudsmen in Nagpur. The belief entertained by those adept in the art of remote control, that Advani would retire and devote his energies reading books, watching cricket and enjoying Hindi films, have been dashed. The inventor of the modern rath yatra has publicly said that he is still in the game of politics, although he carefully avoided any mention of the Deng Xiaoping and Lee Kwan Yew precedent. In recent years, the management of the BJP has certainly come to resemble a diarchy; Saturday’s agreement formalized it.

Future Prospect for Party

If the “politicians” in the BJP scored a modest success by ensuring Advani’s exceptional status, they failed to establish the inviolability of the principle that ‘the BJP should be run by the BJP’. It is no great secret that Nitin Gadkari, like his predecessor Rajnath Singh, has been appointed by the Sangh and the “politicians” have merely endorsed a decision taken elsewhere. But unlike the transition in 2005 which was based on tacit understanding, the latest arrangement is based on the bizarre separation between ‘politics’ and ‘organization’.
The BJP will control its own politics but the RSS (through its full-time pracharaks) will run the organization. Whether this curious separation — reminiscent, in a strange sort of way, of the separation between ‘mass struggles’ and parliamentary interventions in the Communist parties — will work or become the recipe for incoherence is something that bears close monitoring.