NEW DELHI, MAY 13. The leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party committed four strategic mistakes in its campaign to recapture power at the Centre.
First, it was the ill-advised and botched-up move in the second week of January 2004 to pack the Election Commission with a "government-friendly" Chief Election Commissioner after the "difficult" James Michel Lyngdoh will have retired in the first week of February. The former Cabinet Secretary, T.R. Prasad, was the ruling NDA's choice to replace Mr. Lyngdoh. The idea was vigorously promoted by Pramod Mahajan, Jaswant Singh, Arun Jaitley and L.K. Advani.
The move was disfavoured by the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and his aides and eventually the seniormost Election Commissioner, T.S. Krishnamurthy, became the Chief Election Commissioner. However, it became public knowledge that the Government was wanting to tinker with a constitutional institution. It needlessly antagonised the Commission. The Krishnamurthy-led Commission became a vigorously neutral umpire, and it did not help matters that when subsequent to Mr. Krishnamurthy's elevation the Government chose to fill the vacancy by a nominee, N. Gopalaswamy who was perceived as an L.K. Advani partisan.
Secondly, the Election Commission refused to give any break to the BJP. Not only did it reject the request to allow Mr. Advani use the Air Force aircraft, it also refused to fall in line with the BJP's preferred time-table for the general elections. Had the BJP had its way for a March poll, the Congress would have been found out to be under-prepared and under-financed and under-motivated.
Inversely, the Commission's decision to take its time in finalising the election time-table meant that the BJP had to sustain the "India Shining" hype for an unnaturally long period. The excessive sales-pitch allowed the voters to judge the ruling party's claims against the raw realities of deprivation and discontent.
Third, the Prime Minister missed another opportunity — actually two opportunities — on April 12. First, had he shown the courage of his conviction after the Supreme Court judgment in the Best Bakery Case and insisted that the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, be shown the door, he could have arguably won 300 seats for his own party. Every single Muslim voter throughout the country would have gone along with the Vajpayee Himayat Committee. Mr. Vajpayee allowed, one more time, the party to overwhelm his decent impulses. The Supreme Court has given cause for comfort to every middle class voter who is a stake-holder in the rule of law. Mr. Vajpayee refused to read the writing on the wall.
Fourth, perhaps the reason why the Prime Minister could not grab the opportunity offered by the Supreme Court's Best Bakery case was the sari episode in Lucknow. Again, Mr. Vajpayee had a chance to turn a tragedy into a political opportunity. Had he publicly fired Lalji Tandon, the author of the sari tragedy, he could have squared up with the public. Instead, there was only a cultivated indifference to the scale of tragedy.
Mr. Tandon remained very much at the heart of Mr. Vajpayee's campaign in Lucknow. If Mr. Tandon contrived to kill "Shining India," Mr. Vajpayee failed the morality test by seeing to it that no penal action was taken against Mr. Tandon. Instead of a statesman, the country saw him as an ordinary politician, unable to rise above petty political preoccupations.
These four strategic mistakes had the cumulative effect of negating the two distinct advantages the ruling National Democratic Alliance enjoyed at the beginning of the year — the Vajpayee factor began losing its shine and the middle classes lost their infatuation with the BJP and its "performance."
First, it was the ill-advised and botched-up move in the second week of January 2004 to pack the Election Commission with a "government-friendly" Chief Election Commissioner after the "difficult" James Michel Lyngdoh will have retired in the first week of February. The former Cabinet Secretary, T.R. Prasad, was the ruling NDA's choice to replace Mr. Lyngdoh. The idea was vigorously promoted by Pramod Mahajan, Jaswant Singh, Arun Jaitley and L.K. Advani.
The move was disfavoured by the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and his aides and eventually the seniormost Election Commissioner, T.S. Krishnamurthy, became the Chief Election Commissioner. However, it became public knowledge that the Government was wanting to tinker with a constitutional institution. It needlessly antagonised the Commission. The Krishnamurthy-led Commission became a vigorously neutral umpire, and it did not help matters that when subsequent to Mr. Krishnamurthy's elevation the Government chose to fill the vacancy by a nominee, N. Gopalaswamy who was perceived as an L.K. Advani partisan.
Secondly, the Election Commission refused to give any break to the BJP. Not only did it reject the request to allow Mr. Advani use the Air Force aircraft, it also refused to fall in line with the BJP's preferred time-table for the general elections. Had the BJP had its way for a March poll, the Congress would have been found out to be under-prepared and under-financed and under-motivated.
Inversely, the Commission's decision to take its time in finalising the election time-table meant that the BJP had to sustain the "India Shining" hype for an unnaturally long period. The excessive sales-pitch allowed the voters to judge the ruling party's claims against the raw realities of deprivation and discontent.
Third, the Prime Minister missed another opportunity — actually two opportunities — on April 12. First, had he shown the courage of his conviction after the Supreme Court judgment in the Best Bakery Case and insisted that the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, be shown the door, he could have arguably won 300 seats for his own party. Every single Muslim voter throughout the country would have gone along with the Vajpayee Himayat Committee. Mr. Vajpayee allowed, one more time, the party to overwhelm his decent impulses. The Supreme Court has given cause for comfort to every middle class voter who is a stake-holder in the rule of law. Mr. Vajpayee refused to read the writing on the wall.
Fourth, perhaps the reason why the Prime Minister could not grab the opportunity offered by the Supreme Court's Best Bakery case was the sari episode in Lucknow. Again, Mr. Vajpayee had a chance to turn a tragedy into a political opportunity. Had he publicly fired Lalji Tandon, the author of the sari tragedy, he could have squared up with the public. Instead, there was only a cultivated indifference to the scale of tragedy.
Mr. Tandon remained very much at the heart of Mr. Vajpayee's campaign in Lucknow. If Mr. Tandon contrived to kill "Shining India," Mr. Vajpayee failed the morality test by seeing to it that no penal action was taken against Mr. Tandon. Instead of a statesman, the country saw him as an ordinary politician, unable to rise above petty political preoccupations.
These four strategic mistakes had the cumulative effect of negating the two distinct advantages the ruling National Democratic Alliance enjoyed at the beginning of the year — the Vajpayee factor began losing its shine and the middle classes lost their infatuation with the BJP and its "performance."
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