The Wait At The Machan

The orchestra is in no danger of pausing the ‘Modi for PM’ tune just yet. As his backers in the BJP see it, Brand NaMo has sold modestly till now, but anoint him as PM candidate, and he would break the barrier and take the party closer to its dream of regaining power at the Centre.

And Modi supporters in the party are in no mood to waste any more time. Sources confirm that BJP chief Rajnath Singh is under huge pressure to do the needful, even as a large section of the party wants to wait till December when the crucial set of assembly polls is over. Suresh Soni, joint general secretary in the RSS and its pointsman in the BJP, “is pushing for Modi’s anointment as soon as next week”, a senior Sangh leader confirms to Outlook. His hurry, senior leaders exp­lain, stems not so much from “absolute support for Modi but from Soni’s historic differences with Advani”. He has not forgotten, they add, “that Advani had complained against him to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and even asked for his ouster post the Goa executive”. Interes­tingly, Soni was also the one who engineered Nitin Gadkari’s exit as party chief earlier this year and found Rajnath a place at the helm. Considered close to Soni, Rajnath may therefore “buckle under pressure soon enough”.

But even as Gameplan Modi seems right on track, a few chinks persist. They were evident in the meeting RSS had with the BJP top brass in New Delhi last week, where one faction rallied, as usual, for declaring the Gujarat chief minister as the BJP’s PM candidate. And another faction rallied, as usual, against the idea. Which brought the saffron set back to its original state of being: a limbo.

Sources in the Sangh insist the Aug 1 meeting, held interestingly in a building owned by the kin of a senior VHP leader, wasn’t to push a decision on Modi. It was instead meant to be “an apprising session of the BJP by the RSS, simply to inform the top party leaders in Delhi about the decisions taken by the RSS in its meeting in Amravati, Maharashtra, last month”.

If the decision isn’t forced, Modi will most likely have to wait till December when the BJP’s scorecard becomes clearer post the state polls. Right now, regional leaders are openly resisting Modi’s intervention in their election campaigns (with Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan refusing to inc­lude him even in publi­city material) and insisting they’re in a position to lead their respective platoons into battle on their own. Others like Shatru­ghan Sinha and Jaswant Singh have also expressed reservations, with Jas­want even insisting that the PM candidate be announced only after the polls.

“The opposition to Narendrabhai,” a BJP leader confirmed, “will continue until we make a formal announcement on our prime ministerial nominee. That really leaves our party in an odd position. While we’re busy promoting Narendra­bhai as our most popular leader, nothing has moved any further from where it was a few months back.”

Reason why, even though efforts have been made to appease senior leaders like Sushma Swaraj, Nitin Gadkari and others by giving them charge of small subcommittees for the Lok Sabha polls, there have been no final plans for 2014 from the BJP headquarters or the subcommittees. They will be cleared by Gandhinagar and a small cabal close to Modi that is overseeing the potential campaign.

Either way, the RSS has for now, say sources, agreed to go along with the state leaders’ wish of waiting till year-end. “Wait-until-December” is also what Advani had told RSS chief Mohan Rao Bhag­wat in his meeting in Nag­pur last month. He had cited both the displeasure of reg­ional satraps like Chou­han and Raman Singh over Modi’s elevation and the fear of polarising votes in the state elections.

Factoring in these various considerati­ons, the Sangh in its Amravati meet in early July decided to go ‘collective’ and form a core committee within the BJP to arrive at final decisions regarding its fut­ure and strategy for 2014, inc­luding the fate of Narendra Modi. “The core committee comprising L.K. Advani, Raj­nath Singh, Nitin Gad­kari, Ram Lal, Arun Jaitley and Narendra Modi has the san­ction and recognition of the Sangh,” says a senior Sangh pracharak, “and from now on, it’ll accept only the decisi­ons taken by this core committee, not ones taken under the influence of one individual. Both Raj­nath and the party have been informed about this.”

The core committee decision, sources also confirm, came after senior pracharaks in the Sangh argued that “despite Modi’s popularity with the cadre and outside, regional leaders feel he would unnecessarily polarise votes, especially in a state like MP where Chouhan hopes to find the support of the minority community.” To buttress the point, the BJP’s 2009 performance in Uttar Pradesh was invoked when Advani’s projection as PM had polarised votes and helped the Congress do better in the state.

Besides, as a senior Sangh pracharak says, “The assembly polls don’t necessarily need Modi to be projected as PM. Regional leaders are doing well and can manage the state elections themselves. If there was a demand from the cadre to elevate Modi, then that demand was met during the Goa executive in June. Beyond that, let’s see which way the tide turns in the assembly polls.”

So, where does that leave the RSS on the Modi question? Going by sources, the senior leaders of the Sangh, including general secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi, who was there at the Aug 1 meeting, have at best given the BJP a “no-objection certificate” on him. That done, they have also told the BJP that “the decision to declare Modi as the PM candidate will have to be the party’s own; the Sangh shall only endorse it once there is unanimity on one particular name for the top post”. That unanimity may be a little hard to come by. Sooner or later, however, the saffron set will have to bite that bullet.