The Bharatiya Janata Party’s disastrous performance in the Delhi polls in February and its entanglement with a coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir that seems fast emerging as a misadventure appear to have cooled Amit Shah’s relations with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Amidst growing concern about the BJP president’s ability to keep crafting beneficial electoral strategies, the RSS headquarters in Nagpur has started having second thoughts about allowing him to continue as the top leader of its political arm.

To be sure, it is premature to talk of an immediate decline in Shah’s stature, since Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the most powerful person in the Sangh Parivar, will prevent that from happening. But tensions are clearly rising in Nagpur, and many in the RSS insist that the BJP president’s fate is now directly linked with the outcome of the assembly elections in Bihar, due in November. Things will not be so smooth for him if he does not pull out a victory in the state, they say.

“It is this concern that was the central theme of the Sangh leaders’ marathon meeting with Amit Shah at Nagpur” last week, said a senior RSS office-bearer. “If you ask me to explain in one sentence as to what happened in Nagpur, I would simply say that Shah has been put on notice. It would become difficult for him to obtain a second term if the party fails to win in Bihar.”

Mid-term appointment

The BJP president is elected (so to say) for three years. But in July, Shah was appointed party chief as a mid-term arrangement after Rajnath Singh was inducted into the Union cabinet. Singh, who had been appointed as BJP president in January 2013, had already completed half of the term by the time he handed over the baton to Shah. January 2016, therefore, will be critical for Shah as well as for the RSS.

On Friday, Shah spent nearly eight hours in Nagpur, where he attended a series of meetings with the RSS brass. According to officials at the Sangh headquarters, he remained closeted with Sar Sanghchalak Mohan Bhagawat and Sar Karyavah Bhaiyyaji Joshi for nearly four hours. Though Shah was tight-lipped after the meeting, it was learnt that the issues on which he faced a grilling included election management in Delhi, the BJP's alliance with the Peoples Democratic Party in J&K, the status of Article 370 that gives the state autonomy, and the land acquisition bill.

“They also discussed some organisational issues, including Amit Shah’s plan to fill vacancies in his team and to tackle challenges particularly in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh,” the RSS office-bearer said.

Vacant slots

The BJP has three vacancies at the level of general secretary, since Rajiv Pratap Rudy, JP Nadda and Ram Shankar Katheriya have been inducted into the council of ministers. Among the names that are doing the rounds are opposition leader in the Bihar assembly Nand Kishore Yadav, former Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda, and Madhya Pradesh Member of Parliament Kailash Vijayvargiya.

However, RSS insiders feel that more than the desire to discuss issues concerning the BJP, it was the growing unease with regard to forthcoming polls in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh that led Nagpur to summon Shah to the meeting. These elections are crucial for the BJP not just to consolidate the gains it made in the last year’s Lok Sabha polls, but also to improve its tally in the Rajya Sabha, where it is in a minority and so unable to pass crucial legislation.

Amit Shah's tenure as BJP president will end in January 2016, two months after the assembly polls in Bihar. The election result is, therefore, likely to have great bearing on whether he gets a second term.