Opinion BJP’s Kiran
Party’s Bedi gamble is born of compulsion. It opens up possiblities, is fraught with consequences
The BJP’s announcement of Kiran Bedi as its chief ministerial candidate for Delhi is a remarkable political event. It appears to reverse the BJP policy of fighting in the states in Modi’s name. Be it the campaign for Haryana or Maharashtra, or even in Jharkhand where the party has had a chief minister of its own, the message was clear: the vote was primarily being sought for Modi and for the national project he has come to symbolise at the Centre, and not for the local leadership or agenda. Of course, this party policy, which is now being rolled back in Delhi, itself represented a reversal of an earlier trend of projecting strong state leaders by the BJP. For the first time since the Modi-led BJP came to power at the Centre, therefore, the BJP is going into electoral battle armed with a name other than Modi’s. And, for the first time in the party’s recent history, that name belongs to an individual who has only just made a lateral entry. In other words, Bedi’s rush to the top in a party that has recently come to be dominated by Modi, but has always nurtured a strong organisational self-image and ideologically driven cadre, is likely to unleash a new dynamic.
The BJP evidently calculates that Bedi’s elevation will help it respond to the Delhi electorate’s special needs. This, after all, is a city-state in which old-style political loyalties are presumably superseded by the tug and pull of its changing demography and where there is a constant renewal of a concentrated aspirational vote. Delhi provided the platform for the birth and dizzying rise of the AAP — a new kind of political party and experiment that could not be traced back to any existing formation, or the old political formulae, and which redrew the political-electoral map of the city. In such a city, the BJP hopes that Bedi would provide the other end of a high-profile, pan-Delhi contest against the AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal, a challenge that its existing local leadership seems ill-equipped to meet. The BJP’s gamble also is that the BJP-RSS rank and file that has been deprived of power in Delhi for long years will now rally behind Bedi, if only because of its will to power.
But there are imponderables here for the BJP. For one, it may have misread what makes up the Delhi exception. By promoting the “outsider”, it could end up excessively ruffling local feathers in the party while making not enough of a headway in an electorate that may be looking for a new and gamechanging agenda, not necessarily a new and gamechanging leader. Bedi herself will have to address questions touched off by her own dramatic turnaround — from avowedly anti-political, flag-waving lieutenant of the Anna movement that raged against the BJP-Congress, to wannabe BJP chief minister unabashedly enthralled by Modi’s leadership. Whatever the outcome of the election, Bedi’s hectic elevation marks a new milestone in a party and parivar that have been known to fetishise ideological belongingness and patience as political virtues.
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