BJP’s glass house

L K Advani’s critique of the Congress would have had more substance had his own party not been equally vulnerable to similar charges. Advani said the prime minister is weak. He himself has been vetoed by his party and has had to put a spin on wholly sensible suggestions. Advani says the Congress has given in to the Left. His party bows before a shadowy Right. Advani says the nuclear deal should not be given up, as he alleges the UPA is doing, but that it should be re-negotiated. Had Advani been in government he would have known the deal as it stands now is substantively unimprovable, and meets India’s requirements. Advani says the BJP will tell the people that the Congress is not capable of furthering national interest. He should be thankful to the Congress if the latter has decided against early elections — the BJP is not in a fit condition to face the people.

This last point deserves elaboration. In case of elections early-middle next year, the BJP would not have really known who to make its prime-ministerial candidate and, assuming Narendra Modi got a second term in Gujarat, would not have known how to handle suggestions that he be made the national face of the party. True, in the last general elections Sonia Gandhi, for well-known reasons, had not declared herself to be the Congress’s prime- ministerial candidate, and the BJP could ask ‘Vajpayee vs who’. But no one had any doubt that Sonia was the Congress leader. Is Advani the BJP leader the same way? Is anyone? Those letters and trademark cryptic comments that Atal Bihari Vajpayee keeps dropping unnerve everyone in the party and confuse everyone outside it.

The Congress, in its own wisdom, will possibly give the BJP a breather. The BJP should use this time to fix a long list of problems. It is in a shambles in UP. In MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh it will face anti-incumbency; these days state-level incumbency affects national elections. In Tamil Nadu, it doesn’t have an ally. In Maharashtra, its ally has no problem humiliating it and is known to admire Sharad Pawar’s NCP. And at the Centre, let us remind the party again, it doesn’t really have a leader.