Speaking at an election rally in Jharkhand, the prime minister declared that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s emphatic victory in the bypolls in Karnataka can be attributed to the people’s decision to punish the Congress, which had connived to capture power in the state through the ‘back door’. Narendra Modi, presumably, was alluding to the unlikely alliance that the Congress managed to stitch up with the Janata Dal (Secular) to form a government even though it was the BJP that had emerged as the largest party in the assembly elections. It is possible that the Herculean challenge of getting India’s tottering economy on track is playing tricks on the prime minister’s memory. This is because in recent years, of all political parties, it is the BJP that has demonstrated an unsavoury eagerness to win power through, what Mr Modi alleges is, the back door. Goa and Manipur, where the BJP sneaked into the seat of power in spite of lacking a majority, are only two examples. Tacit encouragement of defection from the rival camps, augmented by financial clout, has paid dividends for the BJP in Karnataka too. Perhaps the prime minister needs to be reminded that the by-elections had been necessitated because of the defections from the Congress-JD(S) alliance that were allegedly engineered by Mr Modi’s party. Can there be a more obvious example of a back-door entry to the hot seat? It is a bit too rich to expect an aggressive party as the BJP to adhere to moral scruples. But Maharashtra, which has witnessed the coming together of strange bedfellows, has shown that the BJP’s rivals are quickly learning the mischievous art of trampling the public mandate. A fractured mandate is increasingly turning out to be a licence for amoral politics. These shenanigans — every political party is complicit in the trade — expose the hollow moral heart of the republic. What would encourage politicians to continue to indulge in such chicanery is that the voters seem not to mind the antics of turncoats. Of the 13 defectors from the Congress and the JD(S) in the fray in Karnataka, as many as 11 have emerged victorious.
The Congress, evidently, was undone by its traditional Achilles heel — subterranean factionalism as well as feckless leadership. The JD(S) has been battered too. But the verdict need not be seen as a balm for the BJP. The bypoll results ought to be viewed as a personal triumph of B.S. Yediyurappa whose ties with the BJP’s central leadership are reported to be testy. Strong regional leaders have generally been frowned upon by parties with centralized architecture. The BJP, which has been speaking the language of only two leaders for a while, cannot claim to be an exception in this regard.
