The name of the new BJP party president will be declared after the assembly results. In the wake of the unimpressive showing in the Lok Sabha polls, the RSS was keen on Shivraj Singh Chouhan to replace J P Nadda as BJP president, but the popular former CM of Madhya Pradesh was unacceptable to the Modi-Shah duo. The new president will have to be supported by both the government and the Sangh Parivar and be slightly younger than the present high command. The leading contenders in the race are reportedly Dharmendra Pradhan and Bhupendra Yadav. Others in the running such as Vinod Tawde, Devendra Fadnavis et all are seen to have handicaps. Both Pradhan and Yadav are 55 and prominent OBC faces. Pradhan, an old ABVP hand, is a favourite of RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale. Yadav, who once headed the RSS’s lawyers’ unit, has the blessings of Suresh Soni, once Modi’s benefactor. Pradhan’s recent success in Haryana, where he was in charge of the election, is an advantage. Similarly, Yadav earned kudos when the BJP pulled off a surprise upset in Madhya Pradesh last year. His standing would increase if he pulls off a BJP victory in Maharashtra.
A common presumption, which is, in fact, incorrect, is that the cast of characters in the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Nijjar in Canada and the attempted murder of Gurpatwant Pannun in the USA is the same. The Canadian authorities have linked the Nijjar killing to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, a premise which is difficult to establish since Bishnoi is in an Indian jail. This perhaps explains the Canadians’ unstatesmanlike and immature approach in voicing as-yet-unproven charges, providing motivated leaks to a US newspaper and putting documents on the internet to bolster their claims. In contrast, the US authorities are diplomatically silent, though they believe they have a cast-iron case in a New York court for prosecuting Nikhil Gupta, who was extradited from the Czech Republic. It appears that in the murky world of undercover hit jobs, the US citizen hired to assassinate Pannun was in fact a double agent working for the US government’s Drug Enforcement Agency! The double agent, while pretending to carry out the hit job, strung along those who hired him and entrapped them into not just exposing their culpability, but also boasting of embarrassing details of earlier hit jobs. (But such testimony, even if true, can be considered only secondary evidence in a third country.) The US authorities, unlike the Canadians, have been so discreet that they have not even questioned why Vikash Yadav, who is wanted for questioning in the USA and is now absconding, was most unusually granted temporary bail for six days despite the serious charges against him.
In contrast to the disharmony and non-cooperation during the Lok Sabha elections, the RSS and BJP are fully united in the assembly polls. In Mathura, the RSS’s Dattatreya Hosabale remarked that there may be occasional differences in a family, but ties can never be broken. This was a pointed reference to BJP president J P Nadda’s statement to The Indian Express during the recent Lok Sabha polls – that the BJP did not need the RSS as it was now “saksham (capable)” on its own. Recently, Prime Minister Modi tweeted congratulations to Mohan Bhagwat on the RSS entering its centenary year. Of late, Amit Shah has gone out of his way to meet many top RSS functionaries. One-time RSS poster boy Ram Madhav, who was sidelined in the BJP for nearly five years, was appointed election in-charge of J&K. The RSS has nominated functionaries to co-ordinate with the BJP in poll-bound states. Joint general secretary Arun Kumar was in charge of Haryana, Atul Limaye is looking after Maharashtra and Alok Kumar for Jharkhand.
