BJP’s baffling silence in Ludhiana West

TWENTY days before the Ludhiana West Assembly constituency goes to the polls on June 19, the Punjab BJP is asking two questions. The first is, Ludhiana West where? And the second, Ludhiana West who? The crisis in the party in the state is totally at odds with a juggernaut that has been caterwauling across the country over the last several months and mopping up all the governments it sets its eyes on. Haryana. Maharashtra. Delhi. Even in Manipur, the BJP folks are claiming the support of a majority of the MLAs (44) in an attempt at upsetting the local applecart. The BJP blitzkrieg didn’t need Operation Sindoor to underline the 24×7 presence of the world’s largest political party — with a 90-crore membership, the BJP claims to be even larger than the Communist Party of China. Certainly, Operation Sindoor has magnified PM Narendra Modi’s importance not just in the party, but also across the country and in the international arena. He took the decision, first, to target terror infrastructure inside Pakistan.Then, when the Pakistanis struck back by raining drones and missiles on Indian military infrastructure from Baramulla to Bhuj, it was the PM who decided to escalate the air war by bombing Pakistan’s 11 bases and runways. The BrahMos missile certainly did its job well, but the credit for the decision to play eyeball-to-eyeball with Rawalpindi until Rawalpindi blinked, must certainly be given to Modi. Close by his side, the powerful Home Minister and Modi’s closest confidante, Amit Shah, has demonstrated how there’s no sunlight between the PM and he. It’s as if they complete each other’s sentences. Between them, there’s full control over the party and the country. The thing about Amit Shah, as has been made clear again and again, is that he doesn’t leave anything to chance. It is said he fights every election, from panchayat to Lok Sabha, as if he’s astride the Mahabharata chessboard, thinking through every move three moves before. Within days of the end of the India-Pakistan conflict, as the PM travelled across the country talking to people about the conflict just ended, Shah was back in the Jammu region to assess the damage on the ground. Perhaps, none of this is new. Modi-Shah have had the BJP and the country in their grip since the party came to power in 2014 — dividing the Opposition, influencing both society and media, invoking the gods and conflating it with nationalism, although, as we know, one of the most endearing things about Hindu gods is that they have feet of clay. All the party presidents, both past and present, know that. Current incumbent JP Nadda, the mild-mannered gentleman from Himachal Pradesh, must be wondering till when and how long his extended presidency is going to last. The RSS is said to be fully on board the Modi train, its message of Hindutva being seeded across the length and breadth of the country; what more could it want in its centenary year. So, back to the first question. Why does no one in the BJP, not even Modi-Shah, care about a bypoll in a corner of Punjab, in Ludhiana West, considering Punjab is a sensitive, border state; has just been through a near-conflict with Pakistan, even if it was mostly an air war; and none other than the PM came to Adampur within a day of the end of the conflict because the S-400 had warded off Pakistan’s Hatf missiles? Consider the total disinterest. The BJP state president, Sunil Jakhar, resigned several months ago and there is no move to replace him. The larger-than-life Amarinder Singh, who left the Congress to teach it a lesson and joined the BJP, is far removed from the heat and dust of politics and is planning a summer of travel. Vijay Rupani, the man from Gujarat who is in charge of Punjab, hides when he rolls his eyes in boredom, but everyone can see. Ludhiana West is a predominantly Hindu constituency, as much as 85 per cent, perfect territory for the BJP to showcase its determination to do much better than the only two MLAs it has today. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP didn’t do too badly, winning 18 per cent of the vote. The PM, who spent a large time in Punjab during the Emergency, is said to have a fond corner for Punjab. But a certain je ne sais quoi is clearly missing. Local Ludhiana boy Vikram Sandhu is said to be a likely candidate from Ludhiana West — he had contested the election the last time too — except, the local ‘sanghathan’ or RSS man, Manthri Sreenivasulu, doesn’t approve. Sreenivasulu, instead, likes Jeevan Gupta, another local who pays full obeisance to the ‘sanghathan’, but as a wag offered, “won’t get even 10 votes.” Sreenivasulu, meanwhile, is most unpopular in the Punjab BJP. A god-fearing, Telugu-speaking gent, he earnestly clocks the miles, going from ‘pind’ to ‘pind’, village to village, but to little avail. It’s not really his fault. The Punjabi is mystified by him, and he is mystified by the Punjabi. Newton’s Third Law prevails here; every action has an equal and opposite reaction. For sure, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, via Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, India is one, but the BJP must know that some local flavour is always welcome in the Maggi. Back, then, to the original question. Why is the BJP not interested in fighting Ludhiana West? Perhaps, Punjab with only 13 Lok Sabha seats doesn’t matter that much; and without the Akali Dal, it’s difficult for the BJP to enter the state’s Sikh-dominated villages. Perhaps, none of the above is true and the real reason is that Punjabis, so used to resisting the idea of the Delhi Durbar for centuries, find it easy to escape the charms of the saffron party. So, why doesn’t the BJP want to change that state of being?

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