The BJP, as the strongest political establishment ruling the Centre and several states, is far from being a cohesive political entity. Consider the manner in which it is appointing leaders at its head. It requires an enormous amount of guts for a political establishment to field leaders without the necessary clout even at its apex, like a magician springing a surprise with his magic wand. In the latest reorganisation the saffron party has installed two lightweights as its vice president and national secretary. One is former Aligarh Muslim University vice-chancellor Tariq Mansoor, a BJP MLC in Uttar Pradesh; the other is Anil Antony, whose only proven qualification is that his father AK Antony is a veteran Congress leader. Both were brought in as minority representatives even as they have no organisational experience or grooming worth citing.
Anil Antony was heading the social media wing of the Congress, the main engagement of which was to trash the BJP and PM Modi. Out of the blue, six months ago, he made an abrupt about-turn allegedly on encouragement from his father and found virtue in Modi thereby criticising a BBC documentary that showed the PM and India in a “poor light.” He was welcomed with open arms into the BJP and now made a national secretary. Tariq Mansoor too does not have any organisational experience. In trying to appease the minority communities the BJP has fallen to ludicrous levels.
Clearly, the BJP has either failed to groom good leaders from the minority communities ever since its formation over four decades ago or is acting in haste. This is not specific to minority leaders. The party has all along been “experimenting” with greenhorns, many of them having failed to do any good to the party and having eventually been dumped. As a result, the party — a behemoth at that — remains organisationally weak. That weakness was well displayed in Karnataka, where it was sent packing in the last assembly polls. In the other South Indian states too the same wanton “musical chairs” approach it adopted for leadership positions failed to take the party forward. Men with no stature are “installed.” The BJP once rose to power by the charisma of Atal Behari Vajpayee and the organisational heft of LK Advani. In recent years, it is simply and exclusively relying on the charms of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, apart from the able backing it gets from the RSS. A post-Modi scenario might or might not grant such a luxury to the BJP. By contrast, the Congress party has a solid organisational structure. Any Tom, Dick or Harry cannot overnight go and sit at its apex even at the state level.