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| June 5, 2000 | ||
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| BJP Twilight Zone In its search for a new president the party realises it is saddled with ageing leaders By Farzand Ahmed
If the BJP leadership had invoked the austerity clause to cut down on expenditure by clubbing together the 75th birthday celebrations of its top rung leadership, they could have had one big party. Just one look at the age profile of the leadership and it is easy to understand why. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee turned 75 on Christmas day last year. Home Minister L.K. Advani will reach that mark in two years while party Vice-President Jana Krishnamurthi has to wait but one more year. Many of the other leaders crossed that mark in the past few years. Of the other vice-presidents, J.P. Mathur is 78 while Kailashpati Mishra is 75. Of its three chief ministers, Himachal Pradesh's P.K. Dhumal in his mid-50s looks like a preppie compared to Uttar Pradesh's 76-year-old Ram Prakash Gupta and Gujarat's Keshubhai Patel, who is a year younger (see box). As the country moves into the new millennium, is it being ruled by a young party -- just 20-years-old -- that is in the grip of a bunch of doddering geriatrics? Last week, as party elections at the state level got under way, there was renewed speculation over who would head the BJP if Thakre, who is beset with ill-health, decides to opt out. No answers are forthcoming yet. Says Krishnamurthi: "Nothing has been decided. The transition, if any, will be smooth." But such confidence is shaken even by minor rumours: there was a flutter in the party when sections of the media reported last week that 80-year-old S.S. Bhandari, a former BJP vice-president and currently the governor of Gujarat, was likely to succeed Thakre. "This is newspaper humbug," fumed J.P. Mathur, another party vice-president, who is, ahem, 78. Similar reactions emanating from influential sections within the party -- coupled with an "allergy" that both Vajpayee and Advani have for Bhandari -- almost certainly mean that the Gujarat governor will stay put in Gandhinagar. In the unlikely event of Thakre opting out of another term, the job is likely to go to Krishnamurthi, who, sources say, has been groomed for the post. For a long time now, with Thakre frequently in and out of hospital, Krishnamurthi has been running the affairs of the organisation and virtually functioning as its working president. Besides, the fact that he has a good rapport with the RSS as well as the Government stands him in good stead. But will Thakre pull himself out? A minor hitch in the way of a second term for Thakre was removed during the BJP's last National Executive meeting in April when a rigid, single three-year-term clause for office bearers was "relaxed as an exception for this elections alone". It was immediately interpreted to mean that the change was carried out specifically to enable Thakre to continue for another term. But in the BJP, though elections are held, the party chief is rarely "elected. It is always a selection". And in the selection process, only four people matter -- Vajpayee, Advani, Thakre and RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan. They will sit around a table as soon as the party's internal elections are completed in more than half the states. "The issue will then be decided through a consensus after taking into account the sentiments of the partymen in the district," says a party source. Strangely, while the front runners are all geriatrics, there is no dearth of "young" talent in the BJP. Leading the pack are K.N. Govindacharya, M. Venkaiah Naidu, Narendra Modi, Sushma Swaraj -- who are from the organisational wing -- and Arun Jaitley, Pramod Mahajan and Ananth Kumar from the Government. At least four of them -- Govindacharya, Naidu, Mahajan and Swaraj -- were being touted as possible successors to Thakre because they had the ideal qualifications: they were all between 45 and 60 years of age and, therefore, the kind of faces that the party wanted to present in the 21st century, which Vajpayee never tires of reminding everyone, will be "India's century". And all of them have proven credentials too. Jaitley and Mahajan handle crucial portfolios in the Government. Besides Information and Broadcasting, Jaitley also handles the Department of Disinvestment, while Mahajan handles the Ministry of Information Technology. Govindacharya is a grassroots leader who relates to both party workers and party bosses with equal ease, though there are those in the party who put the mess in the BJP's Uttar Pradesh unit at his door. Naidu, the party's able spokesman from Andhra Pradesh, has been eyeing the top post for some time and was suspected of projecting himself through his role as party spokesperson. Then there is Modi who, like Govindacharya, is a pure organisation man with deep roots in the Sangh. Sushma Swaraj is young and is a crowdpuller but for some time now she has fallen from grace and does not enjoy the confidence of the leadership. All these leaders have -- and indeed still do nurture -- ambitions of taking over the party's reins in the future. And considering that the party's constitution does not allow a second term for anyone, each of them may even get to hold the post some time or the other in the next two decades. For the moment, they are drawing comfort from the fact that even if they lose out this time, in the long run, they will still win. After all, in Indian politics, it never pays to peak too early. Thus, in the event of Thakre retiring, Krishnamurthi emerges virtually as the sole contender for the post. But there are several hurdles that he will face: he is distinctly uncomfortable in Hindi to lead a party whose strength lies in the Hindi belt; his elevation would annoy leaders from the north and non-Hindi speaking western states who feel the leader should come from their region. Also, the new leader must have the blessings of the RSS which -- under the hardline sarsanghchalak Sudarshan -- has already adopted a tough stand on several issues. Last Thursday, Thakre, alongwith the RSS Joint General Secretary Madan Das Devi, called on the prime minister. Among the subjects they discussed was the issue of the BJP president. But since replacing one geriatric with another does not usher in real change, the party may decide not make any changes at all. In all probability, it will be Thakre again. |
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BJP
President Khushabhau Thakre went to his hometown Bhopal last week to
celebrate his 75th birthday. Never mind that it was two years too late --
he had actually turned 75 on May 24, 1998. But that minor discrepancy did
not diminish the enthusiasm of several party leaders who assembled in the
Madhya Pradesh capital to felicitate their party chief.