MP Crisis, BJP’s Poaching Game: Where Is Congress Going Wrong?

Image used for representational purposes.

(Photo altered by The Quint)

The question that everyone is asking today is, why is Jyotiraditya Scindia headed for the BJP?

Jyotiraditya Scindia’s complaint was that he wasn’t treated well. After he lost the opportunity to be the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, he was unhappy and Chief Minister Kamal Nath did not bother to keep him engaged and share enough power to keep him in good humour.

Nath wrongly believed that Scindia won’t be able to take a small group of MLAs, enough to topple the government, with him as he was directly managing these MLAs. There was no real heart to heart communication between the two.

Congress decision makers in Delhi knew that Scindia, like many other young leaders, would be upset and they needed to constantly engage with him and step in wherever needed.

Congress’ top leadership structure is majorly confusing even to insiders who don’t know whom to discuss their issues with. Kamal Nath and Ashok Gehlot are seen as Sonia Gandhi’s nominees which meant Rahul Gandhi wouldn’t see it as his responsibility to manage party affairs of these states.

Why Is Congress Unable to Counter BJP’s Moves to Erode the Party?

BJP has been relentless in attacking Congress from all directions and the party has hardly fought back. The real problem is unresolved issues of leadership structure. The party is in never ending transition phase for succession since last two decades.

There is a huge variance in the approach between party chief Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi.

Rahul wants ideological clarity before getting into politics. This is a long term task while Sonia and other senior and experienced leaders want operational continuity while finding a new ideological grammar could wait.

Overall, leaders are grappling in the dark to come up with an appealing story, counter strategy and day to day operational tactics.

There are occasional bursts of activities and statements which get drowned in the BJP’s big propaganda noise on a daily and hourly basis.

For opposition politics there is always space and opportunity. Even if one is devoid of ideas, by simply copying ‘Modi-playbook’ provides ample opportunity to be in the game but the Congress doesn’t get it. Why? Only because the large bandwidth of the decision makers goes into managing party infighting at all levels all the time and the irony is that these factions necessarily do not command mass following but their inter-personal problems are at epic scale.

This saps the energy of the top leadership at a time when there are very few people in the party with institutional memory and ability to comprehend the BJP challenge which has made the politics a new game of direct marketing.

BJP’s poaching program won’t stop here.

Corroding Nehru-Gandhi family led Congress party remains a priority project for the BJP. It knows very well that if the tide turns against it, the Congress is the biggest gainer and Nehru-Gandhi lineage does bring a premium factor.

BJP is ok to deal with all sorts of opposition, including Congressmen of different shades but not Gandhis. If you hear top BJP leaders carefully, they don’t miss any opportunity to exhort Congress leaders to revolt or desert it.

How Does BJP Recruit?

Scindia is the most significant loss after the exit of Jagan Reddy, Himanta Biswa Sarma and many others. The new BJP goes to any extent in poaching and parking Congress leaders into its fold. Remember late ND Tiwari, SM Krishna and Narayan Rane? All such actions were planned and timed perfectly.

BJP has a simple metric for such recruitments — why does a person want to leave? Is he ambitious and power hungry? Is he unhappy in his party for emotional reasons and can quit if he gets only ‘samman’ (respect)? Is he corrupt who will join on cash down basis without a position in the party or government? And does this guy have some weakness/secret?

And then what does the BJP get out of this hiring?

Most importantly, BJP does a serious calculation before deciding on important lateral entries like Scindia.
The gain must be measurable. In the latest episode, the BJP gets a government back in a large state like Madhya Pradesh and in return Scindia gets a union ministerial birth.

We don’t know its next target. Rajasthan is a case of similar category but Maharashtra is different. What we know for sure is this — knowing Scindia’s persona, it will be a steep learning curve for him to stay in the BJP and adapt to its culture.

I wonder why he didn’t or couldn’t negotiate forming a small party and then join the BJP/NDA alliance?