"Maha" disaster for BJP-SS

The trends showing BJP-SS leading in more seats than Congress didn't hold and the BJP-SS combine suffered a big defeat in the elections. This is a body blow to the BJP and led to the resignation of Venkiah Naidu as the party president. Advani has taken over for now and has the monumental task of energising the party, prepare a plan of succession and stop the seemingly unstoppable path to irrelevance that BJP is on now. It would seem like an overstatement to consider the BJP to be on a path to irrelevance, but with many states scheduled to have assembly elections next year, in every one of which the BJP is expected to do rather badly, it is the most important time in BJP's existence. It is a good thing that the man who made BJP relevant in the 80's and early 90's is at the helm to try and make the party strong again. But it begs the question, whither the new generation of leaders in the BJP?. Advani is in his late 70's and cannot possibly carry on for long, especially not at the energy level needed to campaign in numerous state elections.

Advani's job has been made that much more harder by the public disaffection with hardcore hindutva politics. BJP has to somehow craft a development based agenda that appeals to both urban and rural voters. It is easier said than done. As Swapan Dasgutpa poined out on NDTV yesterday, economics has never really been the BJP's strong suit. It is now in the unenviable position of building an economic agenda from scratch. They don't seem to have any clear ideas on that front, with some RSS leaders spouting protectionist "Swadeshi" policies and senior BJP leaders like Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha favoring reforms and liberalisation. Adavni has never really spoken much on economic issues and it is high time he did.

Oh, yeah I forgot. The Congress and the NCP are in the middle of their first fight (of the new election cycle) even before forming the government. Well it figures, because the problem is with forming the government. NCP surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly) won more seats than the Congress and is now claiming the CM's post for itself based on the formula on which the 1999 elections were fought which said that the party that won more number of seats would get to choose the CM. Congress never expected this and are now trying all sorts of arguements to convince the NCP to give up its claim to the CM post. But Pawar is having none of it.

The worst thing for the saffron alliance in all this is that they lost to this alliance. Advani has a job that no one else really wants (and frankly no one else can handle) because any one else will most assuredly fail initially and never ever get another chance to lead the BJP. Exhibit Number 1 being Venkiah Naidu. So Advani has to pick his successor and create conditions which will be suitable for that person to move the party forward and make it stronger.