Inside Track: Modi overshadows BJP meet in Delhi

Never before in the history of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have they credited just one leader, above all else, for an electoral triumph as they are now doing in the case of the party's landslide win in Gujarat.

It is quite extraordinary for a cadre-based party, which believes in consensual decision-making, to bestow all the credit for the near two-thirds win in the recent Gujarat assembly poll on Narendra Modi. From the manner in which speaker after speaker at the party's two-day national executive meeting in New Delhi heaped fulsome praise on the 'Chhote Sardar', it appeared as if the saffron party too had embraced the personality cult, or, as Atal Bihari Vajpayee used to say in reference to Indira Gandhi's Congress party, 'adhinayakbad'.

Modi was certainly the only hero at the meeting, the cynosure of all eyes. BJP leaders from all parts of the country vied with one another to shake his hand, hug him and, generally, to congratulate him on his grand feat in the face of severe odds.

Because of his preoccupation in Gandhinagar, Modi skipped the meeting on the second day, but his absence was no deterrent for members to cherish his electoral feat in the most glowing of terms. The tone was set by party president Venkaiah Naidu in his opening remarks. He left no one in doubt that the party owed its morale-boosting victory after a string of defeats in state after state to only one man, that is Narendra Modi.

And though Naidu was careful not to belittle the role of veteran leaders, the message came through clearly that the party victory in Gujarat was exclusively that of Modi. He had conceived the campaign, and carried it out with not a little help from the party's national general secretary, Arun Jaitley.

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dhumal, who faces a tough election next year, pleaded with Modi to take time off from his duties as the Gujarat chief minister and handle his poll campaign.

Dhumal was happy that Jaitley had agreed to devote more time to Himachal Pradesh now that he was relatively free from his assignment in Gujarat. Even Vasundhara Raje, the newly-appointed chief of the Rajasthan BJP, put in her request that the Modi-Jaitley duo help her win back the state from the Congress party in the next year's assembly elections.

Another man who was most generously felicitated by the members of the national executive was Jaitley himself. For nearly a month he had re-located himself in Gandhinagar to become the most important cog after Modi in the super efficient BJP poll machine.

He masterminded the media campaign, put a daily spin on matters contingent on the ultimate poll outcome and generally smoothened the rough edges.

Jaitley had staked his political career by openly teaming up with Modi, who till his landslide win, was not the most popular man even in the BJP circles.

Jaitley had a personal point to prove in Gujarat. Having abandoned his lucrative legal practice for a full month, he braved the barbs and taunts of the capital's chattering classes which had painted Modi in the darkest of hues.

The Page Three People (PTP) said Jaitley was out of his mind linking up with the "butcher Modi". For the PTP, the poster boy of middle-of-the-road liberalism had become a lost cause. Some in this "darling crowd" showed the temerity to tick him off for the "company" he kept in the BJP.

But proving once again that nothing succeeds like success, post-Gujarat victory, the capital's chattering classes were once again embracing Jaitley as one of their own.

By the way, Jaitley turned 50 yesterday and he marked the day with a gala dinner at his south Delhi house where the capital's chattering classes were in full flow – the same old PTP who were only too keen to write him off as a lost cause barely a few days ago.

Fresh from their victory in Gujarat, the BJP leaders tried to set their house in order in Himachal Pradesh as well but in vain.

Chief Minister Dhumal and the party veteran and central minister Shanta Kumar have been at loggerheads for a long time. The ongoing delimitation exercise to re-order the boundaries of electoral constituencies has further exacerbated matters between the two BJP stalwarts with Kumar suspecting a plot to reduce his influence in his pocket-borough, the Kangra valley.

Given the fact that the elections to the state assembly are due next year, BJP president Naidu called Dhumal and Kumar to his house for striking a rapprochement between them. L.K. Advani, Arun Jaitley and a few other HP BJP leaders were also present.

But the meeting seemed to have made little headway in demolishing the wall of suspicion and distrust between the two faction leaders with Dhumal refusing to accept Kumar's nominee as the state party chief. Naidu and Jaitley were still at it and will try again to sort out matters soon.

The luncheon feast hosted by the BJP president at his bungalow for the members of the party's national executive and the media got almost washed out due to the welcome, though unscheduled, winter rains.

Post-haste they rustled up some thin covers for the long row of tables stacked with the best of Andhra cuisine. Since the host was still preoccupied with the winding up formalities at the national executive meeting, he deputed the Urban Development Ananth Kumar to welcome the guests and ensure that they did not get wet in the winter drizzle.

Kumar managed to have a couple of tents of very thin cloth put up on the sprawling lawns but these were clearly not enough for the 300-odd guests. Which in turn provoked a guest to suggest that "Sithanshu Mittal would have done a better and faster job of sheltering the guests than Minister Kumar." Incidentally, Mittal, a former Delhi University Students' Union president, runs a flourishing tent-house business and is closely aligned with the BJP.

Even in the BJP he is part of Information Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan's kitchen cabinet.

First they were fighting among themselves. Now per force they have been obliged to join ranks and fight the common enemy who threatens to wipe them all out of their businesses.

Yes, we are talking about India's cellular telephone operators who all these years were engaged in fighting their own turf wars. But now with the launch of the Wireless in Local Loop (WiLL) or limited mobile telephone service, hostilities in the telecom industry are bound to get fiercer.

But given the fact that one of the WiLL providers is the country's most controversial industrial house, a leading Delhi cellular service operator was heard lamenting that all of them would be wiped out since nobody can match the superior financial and, therefore, political muscle of the said industrial house.

And our soon-to-be-extinct cellular operator went on to name a senior functionary in the PMO who he alleged had been playing the said industrial house's game all along.