Headlines
BJP's Delhi debacle a personal defeat for Modi?
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By Sreeparna ChakrabartyNew Delhi, Feb 10
He campaigned like a local
leader, handpicked his own chief ministerial candidate for Delhi and
made it a personal referendum on his leadership. Yet Prime Minister
Narendra Modi could not halt the AAP juggernaut in these assembly polls
and in the process lost his first election since his winning streak
began with the Gujarat assembly polls in 2002.
Modi delivered
Gujarat for his party for three consecutive terms in 2002, 2007 and 2012
after he was parachuted to the state from Delhi in 2001. His portrayal
as the party's prime ministerial candidate in the 2014 general election
was a direct result of this winning spree and he managed to win yet
again with the BJP for the first time getting a full majority in the Lok
Sabha.
Despite assiduous efforts by the party to firewall him
from the defeat, the facts are inescapable that the BJP - and Modi
personally - has paid the price for putting his own image and reputation
at stake in a provincial poll.
In fact Kiran Bedi's defeat in
the Krishna Nagar constituency should be a personal defeat for Modi, who
not only chose her in spite of her not even being a primary member of
the party, but campaigned aggressively for her in ways no prime minister
has done for a local poll.
The BJP campaign bypassed local
leaders and focussed solely on Modi's supposedly personal charisma. It
was obvious that Bedi as the chief ministerial candidate was just a
proxy and Modi intended to exploit his own larger than life image in
this election.
Such was his hubris that Modi stuck his neck out
and put himself loud and large in every advertisement of the party in
the election - from bus shelters to billboards to newspapers.
All
posters and full page advertisements in newspapers even on the day of
polling had full blown pictures of Modi with Bedi, the party's chief
ministerial candidate, occupying only inset space at the bottom. In a
personal letter to voters on election day Feb 7, Modi promised a
"world-class city" and said it was his undertaking that he would make
Delhi a city that its citizens would be proud of.
Modi held four
rallies in the run up to the Delhi polls, stretching from Ambedkar Nagar
to Rohini, but his party could not manage to win even four seats.
Kejriwal raced home in 67 of the 70 assembly seats with his "paanch saal
Kejriwal (Five years to Kejriwal)" slogan.
But will Modi be held accountable for the massive drubbing his party got in the Delhi polls?
Not
if the party leaders and spokesmen are to be believed. Despite the call
by Kirti Azad, a medium-level leader of the party, that "heads should
roll", most of the party faces that came on television sought to shield
Modi and declared that it was "not a referendum on his prime
ministership."
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said it was not a
national election and did not reflect on Modi. In fact, BJP President
Amit Shah in an interview last week seems to have sought anticipatory
bail for his leader saying: "Delhi polls will not be a referendum on
Modi".
Modi's Rs.10 lakh suit with his name written on it during
US President Barack Obama's visit and his supposedly arrogant style of
functioning seem to have rubbed people the wrong way.
Most
political analysts have blamed his arrogant style for BJP's massive
defeat in the Delhi election. Veteran journalist and commentator Kuldip
Nayar told IANS: "The way the BJP carried out a Modi-centric campaign,
any loss is of course a reflection on him (prime minister)."
Kejriwal's
win seems to be the beginning of a new political era for the country
with a focus on local leaders and local issues - bijli, paani, sadak -
instead of high voltage foreign policy initiatives which Modi seems to
have shown a flair for.
The common man or the 'Aam Aadmi' seems
to be asking the prime minister how his life can change even if Obama
was Modi's best friend.
As Congress leader Manish Tewari summed
it up: "People wanted to teach BJP (read Modi) and its arrogance a
lesson, they decided AAP is the instrument of their choice rather than
Congress."
(Sreeparna Chakrabarty can be contacted at [email protected])