The BJP played its Dalit card for the 2014 elections, but not before having kept a certain surprise element in store. The party decided to unfold its strategy piece by piece, sending out a strong message that Narendra Modi's appeal is steadily reaching the socially marginalised yet and numerically preponderant community. First it was Ramdas Athawale's RPI in Maharashtra, on Monday it was Dr Udit Raj, a former Indian Revenue Service officer turned founder of the Indian Justice Party and Chairman of the All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations, who has also joined the BJP's fold.
Narendra Modi addresses a rally in Assam. PTI
A big leap forward in this political engineering is the possible re-entry of Ram Vilas Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party into the NDA. Hectic backroom negotiations are on between BJP and LJP leaders on the issue of seat sharing.
A top BJP source told Firstpost that the party leadership including Rajnath Singh has in principle given the go-ahead to the alliance. Though there have been some rumblings in the state BJP unit with the likes of Ashwini Choube, former minister, openly hitting out at Paswan and the possible alliance, the three most influential faces of the BJP in the state -- Leaders of the state Assembly and Council Sushil Modi and Nand Kishore Yadav and Bihar BJP chief Mangal Pandey -- have been summoned to Delhi for final consultations.
Sources said so far been no meeting has taken place between Paswan and Singh. That will happen only after the seat sharing talks conclude.
Nevertheless, the move has unnerved the BJP's rivals. The Congress, which took a possible alliance with the LJP and RJD for granted, is in a state of shock and trying to remind Paswan of his so called secular credentials.
Paswan's significance does not lay so much in how many seats he can win for the NDA or what would be the exact percentage of votes that he could finally transfer to the BJP in the polls but in the larger nationwide messaging that Modi's team is undertaking. Paswan may not have the potential to win his election on his own, nor does he have a Mayawati-like sway over some other castes and communities, but he has a national stature as a Dalit leader. The same is true with Dr Uditraj who could be fielded from Uttar Pradesh as a BJP candidate.
Secondly, the Paswan-BJP tie up will have great bearing on Bihar politics. Along with a prominent Kushwaha leader, Upendra Kushwaha, who has already made an electoral alliance with BJP, the new combine could start a fresh anti-Nitish churning process in the state that could affect the longevity of the JD (U) government.
The move has somewhat blunted the secular-communal debate so meticulously played out by the Congress for all these years against the BJP and especially against Modi. With likes of Paswan who quit the Vajpayee government in April 2002 claiming that he couldn't remain in an alliance that supported Narendra Modi's actions (or inactions) during the Gujarat riots, is now openly tilting towards Modi and joining hands with him. This is a crude jolt to both, the Congress and the protagonists of the Third Front.
It is also a pointer to the fact the "secularism" adhesive that kept the UPA2 going for the last five years has certainly become thinner. Even worse is the message that emanates from the LJP, RPI, or Udit Raj is that the Congress is losing the confidence of Dalit groups and parties led by Dalit leaders, of its ability to win and deliver for their cause. Paswan had been steel, chemical and fertiliser minister in the UPA1. He lost elections in 2009 and thus couldn't be part of UPA2. It was much later that the RJD and the Congress supported him to gain entry in Rajya Sabha as an MP.
Though many take Paswan as one of the biggest political opportunists who quit the Vajpayee government because he felt marginalised after being shifted from the telecommunication ministry to mines but smartly tuned that into a position of a principled secularist, but then his critics concede that Paswan has a very keen political sense of which way the wind is blowing. After all, Paswan has been a union minister (railway, Telecom, IT, Mines, Steel, Chemical and Fertilisers) in four successive governments from 1996 till 2009. So much so that at one point he even had prime ministerial ambitions.
Sources said opening negotiations with the BJP was a well calculated move by Paswan. There are speculations that he could still be posturing to extract some more seats in the bargain from the Congress-RJD. But his most trusted leader in LJP Surajbhan Singh has been more than assertive of his shaking hands with the BJP.
The argument is Paswan realises that he did not have the enough muscle to go it alone in elections, the Congress did not have a future in the coming elections and as such his win or loss would not add much value to his short term ambitions of transferring his legacy to his son, Chirag Paswan. He knows that he would come under severe criticism and many difficult questions will be asked about his u-turn. But all those difficult situations would be worth facing if he is able to put his own future and his son's budding political career on a more buoyant platform. The BJP too will have to explain the alliance with likes of Surajbhan Singh and Rama Singh (LJP) in the NDA rank but again these are the prices of practicing realpolitik.
As the news of Paswan's U-turn gained ground,there was almost a vertical split in Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD. Sensing that Paswan's shift to BJP would weaken RJD and Congress had nothing to add to in terms of support base of any kind, 13 RJD MLAs openly declared that they are switching over to the JD(U). While six of those MLAs whose names appeared as signatories in the RJD breakaway group later turned up at a press conference and denied switching sides, the damage to Lalu's image has been done.
Ironically it is the entry of Dalit leaders to the BJP or NDA's fold that is doing away with the "untouchability" tag on Modi. It could potentially turn out to be his electoral masterstroke. Arun Jaitley writes in his blog, "obviously, the front-runner's ability to first pass the post is significant. The question now being posted is – How will the BJP-led NDA cover the last mile?... I won't be surprised if the last mile eventually takes care of itself."
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