Touted as the world’s largest party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be celebrating half a century soon after the next Lok Sabha elections, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing a problem now.For the past year, Modi has failed to zero in on a leader who will replace J. P. Nadda as the next BJP chief, and to think that no effort has gone into it looks farfetched.Modi, who had stayed away from Nagpur for the past 11 years, virtually projecting ‘I am the monarch of all I survey,’ has now made the first move by visiting the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters a fortnight ago, in an apparent move to bring the Sangh on board. The visit was seen more as a move to assuage the feelings of Nagpur.So the latest news that is surfacing, quoting unnamed sources, is that the next BJP president will be decided this month. Exactly, the same thing was said last month too in a similar fashion. The moral of the story is not only that the churning is still on but also that the matter is taciturn. If one takes home minister Amit Shah at face value, it takes time to choose a leader from a vast party having 10 to 12 crore plus karyakartas (workers). One needs to look at the meeting of party chief ministers and state party chiefs convened by BJP’s national president Nadda, amid the continued wait for the election of his successor. The just concluded budget session of parliament saw an opposition leader like Akhilesh Yadav taking a dig at the BJP for its inability to choose its chief despite tom-tomming as the world’s largest party.Playing it safe, the mainstream media is failing to take note of the issue since the Lok Sabha polls so as to signal that it is just not that important an issue. One thing is clear: Modi’s larger-than-life persona demands that the one occupying the party chief’s post be either his most trusted colleague or someone so lightweight/featherweight that he could be guided suitably. The BJP has a sort of ‘guided democracy’ and so whether it be the party president or the president of India, guidance is virtually mandatory. No one says it from the rooftops. Nadda – unanimously elected as the BJP national president in January 2020 and took over from Shah – had amply fitted in both these categories, but since he has completed his term, the search has become inevitable. And it is almost one year since the Lok Sabha polls for which his term was extended.A similar strategy was adopted when A.B. Vajpayee and L.K. Advani were at the helm of the organisation and they were not heading the party.But that time, unlike Modi and Shah in the present times, Vajpayee and Advani were the most senior leaders of the party who had been trudging through since the days of the erstwhile Jan Sangh. So during the Vajpayee-Advani era, the BJP had K. Jana Krishnamurthi, Kushabhau Thakre, Bangaru Laxman, M. Venkaiah Naidu, and even Rajnath Singh as party chiefs. Nitin Gadkari, known for his close links to the RSS, was brought in under special circumstances.The unwritten code in parliamentary democracies is that whoever is appointed to the party chief’s post needs to be a sort of proxy of the prime minister for a smooth running of the government and the organisation. The double engine of the prime minister and the party chief could alone pull the juggernaut, goes the argument. When Modi was the Gujarat chief minister, he ensured that the party had a docile state party chief, and no one remembers the name of any of the presidents. The RSS in the state, too, had taken the backseat then.Modi is known for the ‘My way or the highway’ philosophy in party matters too. His detractor, Sanjay Joshi, who has been in a political wilderness since May 2014, when Modi became the prime minister, speaks volumes. BJP insiders insist that it was not an easy task to bring in Shah as party chief, but Modi had made herculean efforts to ensure his Man Friday gets the post. That time the talk was that a sizable section was strongly opposed to bringing in Shah in view of his proximity to the prime minister and the fact that they both belonged to Gujarat. A nod from the RSS was vital, as it is now.The only time when Modi-Shah failed to have their decisive impact on the selection of a chief minister was in 2017 in Uttar Pradesh where Adityanath was brought in after much deliberations due to insistence of the Sangh. That time, Manoj Sinha, was the hot favourite of the prime minister for the top job in Uttar Pradesh. Sinha is now lieutenant governor in Jammu and Kashmir amid talks that his pleas to return to state politics has not found favour with New Delhi. Reports quoting unnamed sources had it that the prime minister’s visit to the RSS headquarters last month has so far not been able to break the ice between the Sangh and the BJP for a consensus over the next party president.Quoting insiders, several reports suggest that the RSS leadership has refused to endorse the names proposed by the BJP, remaining firm that the next party chief should be a “strong organisational leader” and not a “rubber stamp”. The delay in the election of the next BJP chief indicates that Modi is not his own man in taking the key decision.Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari are New Delhi-based journalists.
