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NEW DELHI: The appointment of Kiran Bedi at the direct instance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata party president Amit Shah as the party’s chief ministerial candidate for Delhi has stirred a hornets nest. And has for the first time since the Lok Sabha elections, overridden the ‘fear factor’ that seemed to have paralysed the BJP across the country with the Delhi leaders leading a virtual revolt in the party.
The anger over the appointment of Bedi just days before the polling erupted over the allocation of seats, with many long time party members being dropped and ‘defectors’ from Aam Aadmi party and even the Congress being given precedence. The BJP state party chief Satish Upadhyay became an AAP created casualty, being dropped without warning after the opposition accused him of graft. His supporters indulged in violence with the police having to be brought in.
Delhi is the first instance where the anger over the candidates list has erupted openly. So far the BJP top brass---namely PM Modi and Amit Shah---had been able to ensure complete ‘obedience’ from the party cadres with murmurings of discontent barely audible to outsiders. A senior BJP leader from UP told The Citizen when asked how the party had become so disciplined, “everyone is scared, no one dares to speak out.” This was just after the Maharashtra Assembly elections where, despite palpable discontent within, no BJP leader was willing to bite the bullet and speak out.
In fact to a remark that many bureaucrats were not using their own personal mobile telephones to make sensitive phone calls, the BJP leader laughed and said, “well you are speaking of officials, let me tell you many BJP leaders and ministers are also not using their own telephones.” True or not, this did reflect a certain unease within the party that seemed to be in awe of the strong arm tactics it felt the top brass could deploy if required.
The open revolt in the BJP Delhi unit seems to have cut into that fear factor, that had become the centre of discussion and jokes in political circles. Sources said that the winter session of Parliament was the turning point for the BJP itself, as the Opposition joined direct issue with PM Modi and made it clear that it expected the government to be responsible and accountable to both Houses. PM Modi’s silence at the time was again the topic of some discussion with Opposition members of parliament insisting that he was “worried” about the attack on him and the party over the conversion ‘ghar wapsi’ issue.
Bedi’s appointment, sources here said, has revealed the ‘desperation’ within the party with reports of the revival of Kejriwal and his party. Efforts to polarise the election with the violence in Trilokpuri has not succeeded with ‘issues’ of governance---power, electricity, prices, security---all eclipsing efforts to communally divide society. However, there is worry now about her ‘style of functioning’ that is seen as brusque and not political enough, with Shah finding it difficult to convince the local leaders to support a candidate who was not even a member of the BJP till a few days ago. Instead had been a sharp opponent as the tweets and video footage being publicised over the social media, by all her opponents regardless of political affiliations, clearly show.
