The BJP’s failure to cross the majority mark of 272 in the Lok Sabha is likely to lead to a possible rejig of the party organisation given that its president JP Nadda’s extension of tenure is coming to an end this month. Changes are also likely in the government. Under consideration would be better roles for senior leaders like Nitin Gadkari and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who has won the Lok Sabha elections by a staggering over eight lakh votes.
A marathon meeting of the BJP took place on Thursday where Home Minister Amit Shah was present along with JP Nadda and Rajnath Singh.
Though the top priority of the BJP’s central leadership is on the NDA government formation, as the swearing in ceremony has been fixed for Sunday, the BJP, together with the RSS, which many believe will now have a greater say in the organisational functioning, will take a call whether to give another lifeline to Nadda or bring in another face to deliver better results with key assembly elections in a few states like Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand slated towards later in 2024.
The BJP’s organisational changes are expected to go beyond deciding the fate of the president, given the call central leadership will have to take on what to do with former central ministers such as Smriti Irani and Sanjeev Balyan, who have lost the elections. Should they be adjusted into the party; this and other issues would need a response.
Rumbling in Maharashtra
The first sign of the distress in the party was when Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, considered close to Modi, offered to resign taking moral responsibility of the poll debacle in his state and work for the party ahead of assembly elections.
The electoral reverses in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra were key for pulling down the BJP’s tally to 240 from 303 in 2019 though its vote share shrunk marginally by 1.2 per cent — in this poll it was 36.56 per cent while it centred at 37.7 per cent in 2019.
Impact in UP
Interestingly, Sanjay Raut, the leader of Shiv Sena-Udhav Thackeray faction, said Fadnavis offering to resign is a move designed at putting pressure on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to step down for the party’s substantial drubbing in the Hindi-speaking state. The BJP lost nearly half of 62 seats it won in the last parliamentary elections. The tally of UP this time is 33, coming second to Samajwadi Party which bagged 37 seats.
After the Lok Sabha results were announced, Yogi reportedly convened a meeting in Lucknow, where two deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brijesh Pathak, BJP state president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary and other party leaders were present. While the electoral debacle was discussed, UP CM Yogi, said sources aware of internal confabulations, indirectly hinted at having a review to identify root-causes of the party faring poorly at the hustings.
Yogi supporters believe that he was kept away from the ticket distribution. One of the reasons cited for shocking results in UP was wrong choice of candidates as the party lost 29 seats it had won in 2019.
Yogi and the two deputy CMs are coming to Delhi in the run-up to the NDA swearing in on Saturday. But, it was not known whether the UP electoral fiasco would be discussed by the central leadership here.
Rajasthan Thunder
Internal strife simmering within the BJP has begun because the party lost 11 seats in Rajasthan. Rajasthan minister of state Jhabar Singh Kharra pointed out in public that mistakes in ticket distribution, farmers issues were some of the factors behind the BJP’s decline in number of seats in the state. “We could not break the misconception created by the opposition regarding our slogan of 400-plus seats. There was the impact of the farmers’ movement and mistakes in ticket distribution. There were many things that had an impact,” Kharra told reporters at the BJP office in Jaipur.