Signs of schism a worry for BJP

The BJP finally cleared its PM candidate Narendra Modi to contest the Lok Sabha election from Varanasi, deeply annoying senior leader and incumbent MP Murli Manohar Joshi. It also permitted party president Rajnath Singh to migrate — in party circles, it is being viewed as an escape — from Ghaziabad, where he is the sitting MP, to Lucknow, displacing three-time veteran Lalji Tandon. These announcements were made late Saturday night after many days of contentious debate and speculation at the top level.

The reported bitterness of the contention, bordering on a schism, is surprising for a party like the BJP which has taken pride in its “discipline”, an attribute that implies unquestioned allegiance to the RSS, the party’s Hindutva parent body, which lays down the law, and adherence to the rigid internal party hierarchy in which the party chief commands respect and virtually total control once he has made his views known.

Intra-party discussions and differences, natural in the course of arriving at decisions, have generally remained a closed affair in the BJP, with the outside world being made aware of the outcome through official notes. This time around, though, tweet wars have marred the picture right through the process of inner consultations. This was fundamentally the reason for the long-drawn discussion over candidate selection, especially in respect of Uttar Pradesh, where the party will have to do much better than it did in 2009 if it is to climb to power at the Centre.

Such is the intensity of differences within the BJP leadership that senior party leader Arun Jaitley, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, currently seen as being in sync with Mr Singh and Mr Modi, indirectly hit out at the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, by describing her concerns over nominating controversial individuals and entering into alliances with dubious entities as “marginal” issues.

Since the party’s lists for Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat have not yet been announced, it is not clear if Ms Swaraj, MP from Vidisha, near Bhopal, and old warhorse Lal Krishna Advani, who is desirous of nomination from his old seat Gandhinagar, will be permitted to retain their claim to their existing constituencies.

The BJP and its supporters have consistently spoken of a “Modi wave” across India. If this is the case, the display of annoyance and pique by disregarded leaders should not matter, especially since the RSS, which claims a committed cadre expected to double as the BJP’s poll-time workforce, is standing right behind Mr Singh and Mr Modi. But the BJP chief’s switch to Lucknow betrays anxiety. That is something the party will have to wrestle with.