New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party has fielded several Union ministers and Lok Sabha MPs in the upcoming assembly polls in five states. The decision, according to the central leadership, was taken with the twin objectives of strengthening the organisational muscle in these states and encouraging new state-level leadership.A number of news reports cited senior leaders of the BJP as saying that such a move was an “experimental” step to reduce excessive dependence on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to garner votes. A collective leadership in the fray will seek votes in the name of the party, and not on the popularity of the prime minister, the central leadership believes. It is also said that by contesting assembly elections, the central ministers will help rejuvenate the organisation in their respective regions.The move also comes after Modi’s extensive campaign in the Karnataka assembly elections did not produce the desired result for the BJP. The party, steered by Modi himself, ran a high-pitched Hindutva campaign laced with multi-layered rhetoric against minorities in the state. But it still had to face its most humiliating defeats in recent times.Now, the decision to field Union ministers may also come as a respite for Modi to avoid accountability if similar defeats are thrown up in the upcoming assembly polls. A number of pre-election surveys have indicated that the opposition parties, especially the Congress, may have an upper hand over the BJP in the polls. In Madhya Pradesh, the three-term Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government is facing severe resentment on the ground. Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, surveys point out, may hold on to power for a second term.At the same time, Ashok Gehlot is giving a hard run to the BJP in Rajasthan, which is known for toppling governments every five years. The BJP’s ally in Mizoram, the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF), is also facing stiff competition from the Congress and Zoram Nationalist Party (ZNF). The saffron party has slid down many points in the recent surveys done in Telangana, where it had performed surprisingly well in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and subsequent bypolls, and is likely to finish as a distant third in a tight race between the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi and the Congress.Rahul Gandhi flanked on his right by Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and Ashok Gehlot and on his left by Siddaramaiah and Bhupesh Baghel. Photo: Screengrab via X (Twitter) /@INCIndiaThe BJP clearly needed an “experimental” move, given the diminishing returns of its older election gambits. A high-pitched Hindutva card, hyper-nationalist rhetoric, development plank, or even the talk of laabarthi (beneficiaries) seem old and over-exhausted, especially when electoral considerations centre around state politics. The last-minute decision to pass the baton to Union ministers and Lok Sabha MPs is a far cry from the BJP of yesteryears. Before Modi and Amit Shah helmed the saffron party, the organisation revelled in projecting a chief minister candidate in almost all assembly elections. The Congress, on the other hand, went to elections without it. Having a strong chief ministerial candidate was counted as one of the BJP’s greatest strengths. Where have all the state-level leaderships disappeared in recent years, one is bound to ask.Many commentators have pointed out that the increasing centralisation of the party under the leadership of the Modi-Shah duo has pushed the BJP into a corner. There is no leader in the party at the state level – perhaps barring the Uttar Pradesh and Assam chief ministers Adityanath and Himanta Biswa Sarma – who can proudly claim to have the state-wide support of the electorate. And it may be the Modi-Shah duo’s own doing.Speaking in a recent show, political commentator Abhay Kumar Dubey contended that the BJP under Modi is somewhat similar to the Congress under Indira Gandhi, when the Congress systematically appointed pliant leadership in the states as a measure to concentrate all decision-making powers at the top level. As a result, he said, the Congress gradually weakened its own political position in the long run, giving way for opposition parties to fill that vacuum.Modi’s attempts to concentrate powers in his own hands are accompanied by the great popularity that he enjoys both within the party and amidst a majority of the electorate – similar to how Indira Gandhi was perceived. The prime minister has also added a good dose of corporate work culture to the party’s functioning. Although such a work culture has shot up the party’s efficiency in implementing its electoral strategy to a great extent, it has also weakened the party’s feedback mechanisms. Added emphasis on professionalism has encouraged the promotion of those who can implement central strategies more efficiently than those who may be better placed to address state-level concerns. Such a delinking of central and state leaders has already started to show ominous signs for the BJP, at least at the state level, resulting in a leadership vacuum.Let’s look at a few instances of such a trend.In Jharkhand, the BJP nurtured Adivasi leaders like Arjun Munda and Babulal Marandi but when it won the assembly elections, it chose Raghubar Das as the chief minister, who couldn’t match either Munda or Marandi’s stature. The party, thus, had to face a massive defeat in the 2019 assembly polls, months after Modi steered his party to its biggest victory in the Lok Sabha polls.In Karnataka, the decision to sideline its tallest leader B.S. Yediyurappa and appoint Basavaraj Bommai as the chief minister cost the BJP a little too much, erasing the only footprint it has in southern India.In systematically taking away all power from former chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia, the BJP is currently struggling to find her replacement in poll-bound Rajasthan.All signs show that the party’s central leadership does not want the popular chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to retain the seat in Madhya Pradesh if it wins. In fact, throughout his last tenure, the state home minister Narottam Mishra was consulted much more than Chouhan in taking important decisions. That has resulted in a leadership crisis, forcing the BJP to deploy Union ministers like Narendra Singh Tomar and MPs like Prahlad Patel in the assembly elections.The party doesn’t seem to learn from what has clearly proven to be a disaster, and has increasingly attempted to cement Modi’s cult as its central electoral strategy rather than to empower popular leaders in the states. Even in Modi’s home state, the popular Anandiben Patel was replaced as the chief minister by the little-known Vijay Rupani and now Bhupendrabhai Patel. In Haryana, the party ignored many top-level leaders to appoint Manohar Lal Khattar as the chief minister. In Maharashtra, the party chose a Brahmin leader Devendra Fadnavis over popular leaders from other communities. Fadnavis hardly matches the stature of some of the party’s older leaders.Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. Photo: Twitter/@Dev_FadnavisThe party appears to be following the same pattern even in organisational reshuffling. Recently, G. Kishan Reddy replaced Bandi Sanjay as the Telangana unit president. Sanjay had emerged as a leader in its own right and was credited for the party’s strong show in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Similarly, the party overlooked leaders like Sushil Kumar Modi who built the party’s unit in Bihar from scratch and has since then given prominence to polarising leaders like Giriraj Singh or turncoats like R.C.P. Singh. Although former Congress leader Himanta Biswa Sarma has emerged as a popular chief minister in Assam, he, too, was preferred over long-time BJP leader Sarbananda Sonowal. Then in Punjab, BJP’s senior leader Ashwini Sharma was replaced with the former Congress leader Sunil Jakhar as the state unit’s president – a decision that has ruffled feathers.Some of the BJP leaders, while fielding Union ministers in assembly polls, cited Modi as saying that he believed that he wouldn’t be in a position to lead the party’s state campaigns for long, and that state leaderships would have to. There is a clear gap between what Modi is said to believe and the decisions that the party’s central leadership has taken in the last few years. The BJP’s electoral narrative clearly doesn’t match the party’s decisions. Modi will have to do the heavy lifting as long as he remains the sole leader of stature in the party.