Cameras, Bidis and 'Silence' Smoke out the BJP National Executive

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not easily concede space, but somehow this time he had no choice and was pushed out of the headlines of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s national executive meeting by a camera, tobacco, and even ‘silence’ in quick succession.

Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani started the ball rolling, with the discomfiture of being thrown out of the BJP national executive being completely eclipsed by the hidden cameras in a FabIndia trial room in Goa where she was trying out clothes. An ostensibly furious Minister alleging voyeurism had cases slapped on the employees, who are now out on bail with the store insisting that there were no such cameras in the trial rooms. But the story did the rounds keeping Irani well in the news at the start of the BJP meet.

That no love is lost between BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi and Irani is a well known secret in Delhi, but in a first since the Modi government came to power hints of this were publicly visible as well after the store incident. Lekhi tweeted, “Do I smell a RAT 2 obfuscate the BJP national executive meeting, attempts being made not to cover the meeting, instead cover some other inane issues?" Thereby putting together what many a BJP leader had been saying to reporters, but off the record.

Of course in a second tweet Lekhi tried to indulge in classical political damage control, by stating that she was talking about the media, "response 2 my previous tweet shows D intent while 1 story is relevant as news, other S a discussion material, ?ing not Smritiji's but media emphasis." But the damage as they say has been done, and the controversial tweets are trending with speed. The media is not at all concerned, as it is there to cover what works and clearly Irani’s encounters in the trial room of a store were more interesting than Minister Arun Jaitley’s lengthy briefings about the BJP deliberations.

Bidi’s was the other issue alongside that pushed the PM and the national executive deliberations to the sidelines. In fact PM Modi was able to get back on to the front page only by intervening in the bidi issue on the side of those outraged to find BJP MP’s actually declaring that there was no connection between tobacco and cancer.The parliamentary committee on subordinate legislation led by BJP MP Dilip Gandhi, and with at least eight other BJP legislators as members, took the view that there was no need to increase the size of statutory warnings on cigarette packets from 40 to 85 per cent as there was no proof that smoking caused cancer.

"All agree on the harmful effects of tobacco. But there is no Indian survey report to prove that tobacco consumption leads to cancer. All the studies are done abroad. Cancer does not happen only because of tobacco. We have to study the Indian context, as four crore people in states like Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh are dependent on bidi-making through Tendupatta," Gandhi told PTI.

He said the Committee has only sought deferment of tobacco warnings till it looks into the whole issue in the Indian context and not be driven by foreign surveys.

And just as the government was trying to get over this embarrassment with Ministers denouncing Gandhi’s views, another MP from Allahabad this time Shyama Charan Gupta decided to join Gandhi in insisting that smoking did not cause cancer. The BJP is still explaining its links with the powerful tobacco lobby in India, as Gupta owns the 350-crore Shyam Group of Industries of which Shyam Bidi Works is an integral and vital part. The opposition has taken up the ‘conflict of interest’ with Gupta of course denying it and insisting that bidis were even less harmful than cigarettes.

By the time the BJP fended this controversy---that is not completely over yet and will have some reverberations in Parliament when it reconvenes--- the media suddenly realised that senior leader LK Advani had attended the national executive in complete silence. Deafening silence really as he had not made certain that his voice was not heard at the top party meeting on any issue, be it of land or the coalition in Jammu and Kashmir, or for that matter the weather. His silence became an issue with the media with the party having to formally answer questions on the issue.Arun Jaitley said, “He is a veteran leader. He can guide the party from whichever forum he wants.”

When asked about the discussions that might have led to Advani remaining silent, Jaitley said,“We don’t discuss internal decision making with the media. How we settle the programmes of the party, I don’t think we can share with you even in this world of transparency and RTI.”

It did seem that Advani was not invited to speak with the media reporting conflicting statements on this. In the one case it was reported that he was not asked as his refusal could lead to a controversy that the BJP did not want. In the other it was maintained, against through off the record conversations with BJP leaders, that party president Amit Shah did ask him to speak but he declined. Whatever be the truth, Advani’s silence got more attention that PM Modi’s speech at the executive.

A trifle inauspicious perhaps for the BJP that seems to have always have enough going on on the sidelines---through its own members--- to distract even the pliant media.