New Delhi: The year 2019 will go down as a watershed in the BJP’s journey as the party not only achieved its highest ever tally in Lok Sabha but also realised its decades-long ideological planks with the Modi government pushing the saffron agenda with renewed vigour in its second term.
However, it was not altogether a smooth run for the BJP as regional satraps in alliance with the Congress succeeded in dethroning it in Maharashtra and Jharkhand while nationwide protests against the citizenship law and the concept of National Register for Citizens pushed it on the defensive.
The scale of protests prompted its top leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah, to decouple the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) with the NRC, and it remains uncertain as to how the saffron party will push on with its ideological agenda in the face of mounting challenges.
All debated and done, party leaders are likely to look back at 2019 with more than a touch of satisfaction as the year saw nullification of Article 370, criminalisation of triple talaq, enactment of CAA and a Supreme Court order paving the way for Ram temple construction in Ayodhya, issues which have agitated Hindutva cadres for decades.
If the results of the April-May general election underscored the BJP’s preeminence in national politics with the party winning 303 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha, its footprint in state governments was reduced to a mere 35 per cent of the country’s landmass from the peak of 71 per cent in 2017.
If the outgoing year again highlighted the appeal of ‘brand Modi’, it also brought to light the BJP’s vulnerability in state elections when the prime minister and national issues are not driving factors for the common voter’s choice.
The massive mandate of 303 seats in the general elections, however, set off its own unintended consequences for the party, which managed to ruffle feathers of quite a few allies with its “big brotherly” airs.
The BJP lost its Hindutva ally Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and the JD(U), which is now its biggest partner, is yet to get over the slight of being offered merely one cabinet berth in the Modi government as a “symbolic representation”, as Bihar party leaders recalled disdainfully.
JD(U) president and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar summarily rejected the proposal.
The year also saw the rise and rise of Shah as he after being inducted as the home minister in the second Modi government was the face of the central dispensation in pushing its major decisions with distinct ideological hues. (PTI)
