India Insight

Advani’s “withdrawal” may come back to haunt BJP

As soon as former Bharatiya Janata Party president and political veteran Lal Krishna Advani announced that his role in the party and the Sangh Parivar “is much more than the post of prime minister” — he made it pretty clear that he may not be the preferred BJP candidate for the prime minister’s post in the 2014 general elections.

And soon the media and most political analysts made a pretty safe guess that the party would back current Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as its next PM candidate. Yet others named Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley as strong contenders.

But a lot may happen between now and 2014. And as things stand currently, our next PM may be a coalition leader from one of the regional parties. Let us examine why.

Both the Congress and BJP seem leaderless now in a way. Modi is seen as just too controversial and the burden of the 2002 riots will follow him wherever he goes in his political career. Arun Jaitley is just not perceived as a mass leader. And while Sushma Swaraj may be a good “dancer” and is very popular, she just does not have the same political clout as Advani or Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

“The party anyway and the RSS were uneasy about Advani’s rath yatra … He has had to deny that he was in the race … If his decision stands, I think it will be a negative for the BJP, as the party doesn’t seem to have anyone else,” said political commentator Amulya Ganguli.

It is the same issue with the Congress party. It is unlikely that Sonia Gandhi will put forward her candidature and Manmohan Singh will be PM for a third time running. Palaniappan Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee are more bureaucrats than mass leaders and Rahul Gandhi seems determined not to win any brownie points among the general public at all.

He is increasingly being seen as reclusive and uncomfortable with the mantle of Congress’ “crown prince”.

The dog days of India’s bizarre summer of politics

Perhaps the government’s decision to push back the opening of the upcoming monsoon session of parliament was not the best idea. For as the dog days of the sub-continent’s sweltering summer drag on, the parliament-less politicians sweat from the sublime to the ridiculous in the baking heat.

From the haphazard ensemble of senior ministers that flocked to New Delhi’s airport to greet yoga guru turned social activist Swami Ramdev with more fanfare than is reserved for visiting heads of state, to the current conspiracy swirling New Delhi surrounding espionage chewing gum found in the finance minister’s private chambers, it has been a bizarre summer for politics fuelled by the hungry media in the world’s largest democracy.

Kapil Sibal, as Human Resource and Development minister, could have spent his summer break drawing up plans to overhaul an education sector that looks dangerously inadequate to deal with the demographic dividend of millions of young Indians that New Delhi likes to trumpet. Instead, he spent his days holed up in five-star hotels begging Ramdev not to stop eating, and playing it coy in press conferences after quietly ignoring veteran activist Anna Hazare’s demands for a stronger anti-graft bill.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who has seen a series of economic data releases over the past month pour cold water on optimistic growth prospects, spent the majority of his summer trying to chair what appeared to be most unruly meetings on the anti-graft legislation, but has stolen the headlines recently with a mind-boggling story involving government secrets, ministerial rivalries and old-school espionage — all bonded together with chewing gum.

With TV channels and opposition politicians dubbing it “India’s Watergate”, and political figures from across the spectrum weighing in on the sticky mess, there appears little evidence to go on than a few errant pieces of gum stuck under various desks in Mukherjee’s chambers. With the minister himself telling the media to take their conspiracy theories elsewhere, it appears more a case of unhygienic office visitors than dastardly undercover spies.

Outside of the cabinet, the summer bug spread as the mercury rose.

Disruptive opposition blames government for parliament woes

A lack of accountability from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a failure of consultation by his ruling Congress-led coalition and too few days of legislative business, rather than opposition protests that smothered months of legislative debate, are to blame for the paralysis of India’s parliamentary democracy, the leader of India’s opposition party wrote on Monday.

Making no reference to the weeks of protest by his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that saw opposition members shouting, chanting and waving placards in the well of both houses to force the cancellation of an entire legislative session and threaten the passage of the 2011-12 budget, Arun Jaitley called for more “proper conduct” from Indian MPs in an opinion piece in The Indian Express that appeared to lay the blame of parliamentary disruption at the government’s door.

“In the last few decades the participation of prime ministers in parliamentary debates has declined. Their effective intervention is confined to reading written texts prepared by their offices. This is unacceptable… The PM has to be the most accountable in a democracy. His depleting presence in Parliament compels one to suggest (the British system of Prime Minister’s Questions) be successfully replicated in India,” Jaitley wrote.

Reticent Singh is typically media-shy, but a slew of corruption charges against his party compelled him to hold a rare press conference live on national television in February, where he vowed he would not step down despite increasing pressure from Jaitley’s party.

“To meet for less than 70 days in a year is inadequate. Short durations lead to paucity of time available for debates, issues of public importance and legislation. When members, particularly from the opposition, want to raise several issues, the privilege is denied for paucity of time. The gagging of debate leads to obstructionism. Parliamentary obstructionism then becomes an acceptable mode to highlight an issue of public importance,” Jaitley wrote, without making reference to the BJP protest of parliament.

“The government and the opposition both have a key role to play in Parliament. Conflicting opinions and at times even tensions between the two bring out the best in Indian democracy. However, there must be healthy communication between the political leadership in government and the opposition,” Jaitley continued.

The bitter truth behind BJP’s deafening budget silence

To some, the parliamentary walkout by India’s opposition prior to the vote on the country’s annual budget motion marked the failure of India’s ruling Congress party to engage with its primary adversary, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), over its claims that the Prime Minister had lied to parliament to protect his own reputation.

To others, the sight of BJP leader Sushma Swaraj leading her MPs out of the chamber as Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee prepared to deliver the most important parliamentary bill of the year encapsulated the sorry state of India’s increasingly bitter partisan politics that show no signs of repair since trumpeting corruption became the opposition’s raison d’etre. Swaraj would later tell The Hindu that her walkout was to avoid disrupting the passage of the bill, but the damning point rang out loud and clear: the opposition had decided the corruption drumbeat was more important than the budget.

Mukherjee had earlier pleaded with senior BJP leaders to allow the budget to be debated prior to any discussion on a parliamentary privilege motion submitted against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by Swaraj, promising a two-and-a-half hour debate on the issue after the budget had passed.

But as the budget was given precedent over the privilege motion, out trooped the opposition in protest, leaving a half-empty chamber to pass the bill that will keep the country financed on April 1.

India’s parliament was paralysed in November by opposition protests demanding an inquiry into allegations a minister had lost the exchequer up to $39 billion in a telecom spectrum scam, which eventually resulted in the entire winter session being abandoned. Since it reopened in February, after extensive negotiations between Congress and the BJP, various protests from the opposition over other corruption charges have resulted in adjournments and cancellation of parliamentary business.

With a slew of economic reforms seen crucial to India’s continued growth momentum gathering dust as MPs exchange insults and chants across the floor of both houses of parliament, the partisan politics that have turned India’s much-vaunted parliamentary democracy into a slanging match between government and opposition risk ruining far more than just the reputation of the primary belligerents.

Does Swaraj hint at a more politically sharp future for the BJP?

India’s main opposition party, the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have had much to crow about in recent months.

From the minute that the much vaunted Commonwealth Games began to – literally – crumble despite the hundreds of millions of rupees spent by the central government, a seemingly endless run of corruption scams linked to the ruling Congress party has seen much chest-beating and finger pointing from across the parliamentary aisles.

Riding high on damning headlines, and egged on by a lacklustre defence from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the BJP have trained both barrels on Congress, with party leaders Arun Jaitley, L.K. Advani and Nitin Gadkari missing no opportunity to squeeze government and corruption into each and every soundbite.

But the BJP, as any Indian political analyst worth their salt will point out, also have a cupboard filled with graft skeletons, at both a state and federal government level.

Thus, such drum-beating by opposition leaders risks reaching a decibel level that could backfire, with an across-the-board corruption purge likely to tar each and every Indian politico with the same dishonest brush.

As such, the reaction from Sushma Swaraj, leader of the opposition in India’s lower house of parliament, to Prime Minister Singh’s admittance of responsibility in an embarrassing affair involving the appointment of an accused criminal to the highest anti-graft office in the country, was strikingly against the grain.

Swaraj, who had previously joined her fellow BJP leaders in attacking Congress for its failure to tackle corruption, took an instantly conciliatory position after Singh’s statement.

A Republic Day to forget for India’s opposition party

As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh watched India’s 61st Republic Day parade in the New Delhi sunshine on Wednesday morning, senior opposition leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley were in a Jammu prison, where they had spent a night under arrest.

Detained for attempting to lead thousands of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers into India’s northern state of Jammu & Kashmir to provocatively raise the national flag in the state that has been racked by unrest by Muslim separatists opposed to Indian rule, Swaraj and Jaitley’s politically-driven mission had ended in failure.

The BJP appear to have thought that the nationalism-drenched plan to hoist the flag in the centre of Srinagar, the state capital, would galvanize their Hindu support base, and show the ruling Congress party as ineffective in defending the disputed state from separatists who rile against New Delhi’s rule.

Thursday’s media post-mortem strongly suggested that they failed on both counts.

“Omar steals a march as BJP flag mission foiled,” summed up Mail Today on Thursday, as the opposition’s plan to paint the Congress-backed state chief minister as a weak leader spectacularly backfired.

The provocative rhetoric that accompanied the march also risked alienating moderate Hindus and a large section of secular voters, as newspaper editors strongly criticized the brazen attitude to stirring tensions in the unstable region where more than 100 people were killed last year.

Karnataka governor’s sanction: Sagacity or political mischief?

Ankush Arora

Jan 24, 2011 11:12 EST

The tussle between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Karnataka governor Hans Raj Bhardwaj has reached the President’s House with BJP leaders demanding the recall of Bhardwaj.

Could the Governor have avoided sanctioning the prosecution of Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa in the alleged dubious land allotment deals?

In an interview to Hindustan Times, Bhardwaj defended his decision, claiming there are “documented acts of corruption which have cost the state nearly 500 crore rupees.”

That Bhardwaj, a former union law minister, is a Congress loyalist is no hidden truth. And several political observers have conceded that he has dragged the office of the governor into the Congress-BJP mudslinging over various corruption scandals.

“Such permission to prosecute the CM or any minister has to be first sought from the government and not directly from the Governor. This case creates an unanticipated scenario, where it seems that the decision of the Governor may not be beyond question and could be viewed as a political decision,” former Lok Sabha secretary general and Constitutional expert Subhash C Kashyap told the Indian Express.

Last year, the BJP, joined by other opposition parties, blocked proceedings of parliament’s winter session to demand a probe into the telecoms scam that may have cost India $39 billion, resulting in the house’s least productive session in 25 years.

But to have the higher moral ground, shouldn’t the BJP keep its own house in order first by acting tough on Yeddyurappa’s alleged deals and not merely calling them immoral?

Is Congress digging its own corrupt grave?

Telecom Minister Kabil Sibal’s attack on the competency of India’s independent state auditor appears to show Congress’s growing desperation at its inability to silence corruption charges, and the inevitable backfire may illustrate just how out of touch India’s ruling party has become with the current political climate.

Last week’s allegations by Sibal of the “utterly erroneous” calculations in a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) estimating a $39 billion loss to the exchequer during the 2008 2G spectrum sale have led to a barrage of criticism from opposition politicians and the CAG, and appear to have only resulted in increased pressure on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is reportedly mulling a breach of privilege motion against Sibal – a Congress heavyweight – for his insinuation of “serious errors” in the independent investigation, the CAG has suggested his remarks were “in contempt of the House” and the opposition, already riding high on the ruling party’s seemingly endless list of corruption-related woes, accused the minister of attempting to “overreach the Parliamentary process.”

In short, his attempt to discredit the report, with the assumed blessing of Singh and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, has only led to more headlines and headaches.

Sibal may be correct in his assertion. The loss to the state is essentially incalculable – the CAG even admitted that in its report. But in failing to address the issue of improper practices undertaken during the spectrum allocation that the report also noted, he risked appearing to shift the blame away from his sacked predecessor, A. Raja, a member of a party crucial to the success of Singh’s ruling coalition.

Similarly to Prime Minister Singh’s December promise to appear before the PAC to answer questions on the 2G scandal, rather than agree to a joint parliamentary committee as demanded by the opposition, Sibal’s analysis of the CAG report was seen by some as an example of half measures by the government in tackling corruption, and a failure to address the allegations head-on.

Playing politics over fuel price hike?

Vipul Tripathi

Feb 26, 2010 05:52 EST

For the first time in parliamentary history, the entire opposition led by the BJP walked out during the Finance Minister’s budget speech.

The walkout was to protest against the hike in petrol prices.

The opposition is saying the government move adds to the burden of the people.

However, the united front put by the fractious opposition also hints at some pre-planning by the opposition leaders.

Was this reaction justified?

Shouldn’t the parliamentarians have stayed back and argued the point in the House?

The Congress party is calling this a violation of parliamentary tradition.

Shiv Sena, secularists and politics of regionalism

David Lalmalsawma

Feb 4, 2010 06:35 EST

India’s ruling Congress party and main opposition party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have found themselves on a common platform after Gandhi family scion Rahul Gandhi slammed the Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) for their tirade against ‘outsiders’ – mainly north Indians – in Maharashtra.

Earlier, BJP president Nitin Gadkari invoked the constitutional right of every Indian to live anywhere, in a snub to erstwhile political ally Shiv Sena, whose agenda is to promote the interest of Marathis, sometimes with violent effect at the cost of non-Marathis, especially those living in Mumbai.

Waving the politics of regionalism is nothing new for the Sena and its breakaway faction MNS, who derive their political base from the ‘sons of the soil’ ideology.

And so far, they have mostly gotten away without being prosecuted for their agitations ranging from destroying public property to beating up non-natives in the streets of cosmopolitan Mumbai.

The state’s ruling Congress-NCP government has also been accused in the past of allowing MNS to have a free run in Mumbai because of political expediency – as a counter to the Shiv Sena.

So why are the country’s two biggest parties now coming out with a common voice against the Sena and MNS? Is it a confluence of ideology despite differences for the cause of the country’s secular credentials? Or, after so many years of silence, is it just rhetoric with every party eyeing their respective constituencies.

The BJP’s cold-shouldering of the Sena, its oldest political ally, is seen by some as the outcome of political calculations under new leader Gadkari rather than a change of ideology, as it feels the regional party’s agenda is not in tune with the BJP’s pan-Indian aspirations.