About a decade ago, there seemed to be only one obstacle preventing the Bharatiya Janata Party from being able to get a Parliamentary majority: the party seemed unable to speak in one voice. As a popular joke put it, if the Congress had no credible prime ministerial candidates, the BJP had too many. Then Narendra Modi came along and, once he had convinced the LK Advani faction to back him, the party seemed prepared to fall in line.
The arrival of Amit Shah as party president accelerated this centralising force. Suddenly you had an immensely powerful prime minister and a party president who had managed to win the BJP 73 out of 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh and a majority in the Lok Sabha. If there was any question of infighting, it wouldn't be about who leads the BJP, but about who gets to be No 2 in government.
The candidates? Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and, following a considerable distance behind, External Affairs Minsiter Sushma Swaraj. These are the all-powerful ministers who sit on Raisina Hill, along with Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is too recent an entrant to Lutyens' Delhi to contend for the No 2 post.
Jaitley vs Rajnath vs Swaraj
On Tuesday, these three – Jaitley, Singh and Swaraj – held an hour-long meeting in an obvious attempt to send the message that the government's top ministers are not divided in their response to allegations that the External Affairs Minister provided a favour to Indian Premier League founder Lalit Modi, who has been accused of money laundering and other crimes. Jaitley, who is known to be close to many in the media to the extent that he is known as Bureau Chief, came out after the meeting and insisted that all of them agreed on the matter of Swaraj's innocence.
"Her actions were bona fide,” Jaitley said. "The entire government and party are one on the issue. There should be no doubt on this."
But doubts there are, aided in no small part because of two things: BJP Member of Parliament Kirti Azad's #AsteenKaSaanp (snake in the grass) tweet, claiming all of this is a conspiracy against Swaraj, and the external affairs minister's own tweet calling out TimesNow journalist Navika Kumar for being hypocritical about impropriety. (Kumar was on one of those caught on the infamous Niira Radia tapes, telling the lobbyist she wouldn't leak information to her "friend," Jaitley.)
Fight or Flight for Swaraj
What happens next is crucial.
Lalit Modi is not a loose cannon, since he is well aware of the impact of his words, but he is not exactly Mr Tight Lipped either. In reacting to the scandal, he has already dragged in his "friend" Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje and blamed the matter on former United Progressive Alliance minister P Chidambaram and Shashi Tharoor.
The BJP is clearly backing Swaraj in the matter for now, but the Opposition has grabbed on to the scam as evidence of impropriety in the government and will surely continue beating that drum into the Monsoon session of Parliament. As that cacophony gets louder and Modi reveals more the BJP – which came to power promising a corruption-free India – might find it harder to hold on to a tainted minister.
But the alternative, getting Swaraj to step down, is equally problematic, now that everyone has come out in support of her "bona fide" actions. Presuming that no document emerges to completely exonerate Swaraj or no other story displaces this one, Swaraj's best bet would probably be the Nitin Gadkari/Shashi Tharoor approach: resign for sake of the office, claiming innocence all along, spend a few months to a year in obscurity and then get welcomed back into office. (Public memory is short, and 24/7 news channels make it shorter).
Going Down (Raisina) Hill
That of course would leave just two senior Raisina Hill ministers to fight for the No 2 post, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley. Both are bolstered by the fact that there is very little senior talent for the prime minister to pick from, which has saved all three from worse fates:
*Arun Jaitley, because he couldn't win a Lok Sabha seat despite a Modi wave election.
*Rajnath Singh for wielding his Thakur status with impunity and for allegations of nepotism.
*Sushma Swaraj, because she never exactly fit in with the Modi camp in the first place.
This might even be reason to hold on to Swaraj, who has done a straightfoward, no-nonsense job at the External Affairs Ministry, especially considering the talent-infusion of Parrikar at the Defence Ministry hasn't exactly gone well. But that means keeping Swaraj without exonerating her. That might work for now, but will give every Opposition party a stick with which to beat the government and the BJP in the future.
These things are never as straightforward as they seem – it's unlikely that someone in the BJP just gave the Swaraj story to the Sunday Times, which broke it. But if its amplification in India is the result of someone within the party trying to take Swaraj down a peg, they've done so while also seriously endangering Modi's ability to operate an effective government that also claims to be untainted.
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The arrival of Amit Shah as party president accelerated this centralising force. Suddenly you had an immensely powerful prime minister and a party president who had managed to win the BJP 73 out of 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh and a majority in the Lok Sabha. If there was any question of infighting, it wouldn't be about who leads the BJP, but about who gets to be No 2 in government.
The candidates? Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and, following a considerable distance behind, External Affairs Minsiter Sushma Swaraj. These are the all-powerful ministers who sit on Raisina Hill, along with Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who is too recent an entrant to Lutyens' Delhi to contend for the No 2 post.
Jaitley vs Rajnath vs Swaraj
On Tuesday, these three – Jaitley, Singh and Swaraj – held an hour-long meeting in an obvious attempt to send the message that the government's top ministers are not divided in their response to allegations that the External Affairs Minister provided a favour to Indian Premier League founder Lalit Modi, who has been accused of money laundering and other crimes. Jaitley, who is known to be close to many in the media to the extent that he is known as Bureau Chief, came out after the meeting and insisted that all of them agreed on the matter of Swaraj's innocence.
"Her actions were bona fide,” Jaitley said. "The entire government and party are one on the issue. There should be no doubt on this."
But doubts there are, aided in no small part because of two things: BJP Member of Parliament Kirti Azad's #AsteenKaSaanp (snake in the grass) tweet, claiming all of this is a conspiracy against Swaraj, and the external affairs minister's own tweet calling out TimesNow journalist Navika Kumar for being hypocritical about impropriety. (Kumar was on one of those caught on the infamous Niira Radia tapes, telling the lobbyist she wouldn't leak information to her "friend," Jaitley.)
Fight or Flight for Swaraj
What happens next is crucial.
Lalit Modi is not a loose cannon, since he is well aware of the impact of his words, but he is not exactly Mr Tight Lipped either. In reacting to the scandal, he has already dragged in his "friend" Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje and blamed the matter on former United Progressive Alliance minister P Chidambaram and Shashi Tharoor.
The BJP is clearly backing Swaraj in the matter for now, but the Opposition has grabbed on to the scam as evidence of impropriety in the government and will surely continue beating that drum into the Monsoon session of Parliament. As that cacophony gets louder and Modi reveals more the BJP – which came to power promising a corruption-free India – might find it harder to hold on to a tainted minister.
But the alternative, getting Swaraj to step down, is equally problematic, now that everyone has come out in support of her "bona fide" actions. Presuming that no document emerges to completely exonerate Swaraj or no other story displaces this one, Swaraj's best bet would probably be the Nitin Gadkari/Shashi Tharoor approach: resign for sake of the office, claiming innocence all along, spend a few months to a year in obscurity and then get welcomed back into office. (Public memory is short, and 24/7 news channels make it shorter).
Going Down (Raisina) Hill
That of course would leave just two senior Raisina Hill ministers to fight for the No 2 post, Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley. Both are bolstered by the fact that there is very little senior talent for the prime minister to pick from, which has saved all three from worse fates:
*Arun Jaitley, because he couldn't win a Lok Sabha seat despite a Modi wave election.
*Rajnath Singh for wielding his Thakur status with impunity and for allegations of nepotism.
*Sushma Swaraj, because she never exactly fit in with the Modi camp in the first place.
This might even be reason to hold on to Swaraj, who has done a straightfoward, no-nonsense job at the External Affairs Ministry, especially considering the talent-infusion of Parrikar at the Defence Ministry hasn't exactly gone well. But that means keeping Swaraj without exonerating her. That might work for now, but will give every Opposition party a stick with which to beat the government and the BJP in the future.
These things are never as straightforward as they seem – it's unlikely that someone in the BJP just gave the Swaraj story to the Sunday Times, which broke it. But if its amplification in India is the result of someone within the party trying to take Swaraj down a peg, they've done so while also seriously endangering Modi's ability to operate an effective government that also claims to be untainted.
