Opinion Tripping on a bogey
Amit Shah’s loose talk in Bengal embarrasses his party. There’s a lesson in this for the BJP.
Only days after its president Amit Shah loudly promised a “Trinamool-free Bengal”, the BJP is looking sheepish. At a rally in Kolkata, Shah had alleged that money from the Saradha chit fund scam was used to fund terror in Burdwan, and recommended that the TMC stop protecting “illegal immigrants”. On Wednesday, in reply to an unstarred question in Parliament, Union Minister Jitendra Singh acknowledged that investigations had not unearthed a link between Saradha and terror. This is an embarrassing moment for the BJP. At the very least, the ruling party has been shown up to be cavalier with facts. It could draw some lessons from this episode.
The rivalry between the BJP and TMC has acquired a particularly vicious edge ever since this year’s Lok Sabha elections saw the BJP’s best ever performance in West Bengal — apart from winning two seats, it recorded a vote share of 16.84 per cent, up from about 6 per cent in 2009. As reports abound of a surge in party membership, the BJP appears poised to become a significant player in the state’s politics, threatening, if not upstaging, the Left’s claim to be the main opposition to the TMC. The ruling TMC, meanwhile, has been shaken by the Saradha scam, which allegedly reaches the highest levels of party and government, and faces questions about the possible involvement of party workers in the Burdwan incident. Yet, on terror as well as on corruption, the ascendant party would do well to ponder the wisdom of spectre-mongering. Having made black money a major campaign issue before the Lok Sabha polls, peddling fantastic figures and promising its instant return when it came to power, the BJP is now being cornered in Parliament by the opposition, the TMC leading the charge. And now it has tripped over its claims of a dark nexus between terror, corruption and the political opponent.
To establish itself as a credible and responsible contender for power in a long political battle — the next Bengal assembly elections are due in 2016 — the BJP must decide the kind of pitch it wants to make. In Maharashtra, it succeeded by reaching out to smaller parties and building a broader social coalition. In Jammu and Kashmir, its campaign has seen less Hindutva and Article 370, more promises of development. In UP, it deployed well-worn tactics of communal polarisation and fear-mongering, to mixed results. The road to Bengal is long, and the party could do without stumbling on its own loose talk.
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