Uma’s return - A sign BJP is back on track

The New Indian Express
Last Updated : 08 Jun 2011 11:54:37 PM IST

It is too early to assess the impact of Uma Bharti’s return to the BJP, but it is clear indication that BJP president Nitin Gadkari has been able to assert himself on this score despite reservations from a section of party leaders. Gadkari had announced his wish to take back estranged party leaders immediately after taking over the reins of the party. Now he seems to have found an opportune moment to implement his agenda. In this he appears to have full backing of the RSS, which was not exactly happy with the present drift in the party.


This time, the BJP leadership wants to use Uma Bharti to regain its lost paradise in Uttar Pradesh. A firebrand leader of the Ayodhya movement, Uma had demonstrated her combative powers when she demolished Digvijay Singh’s 10-year rule in Madhya Pradesh in 2004. While helping the party regain its Hindutva plank, she can also make the BJP an attractive prospect for a section of the backward classes, which could otherwise go to Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. Interestingly, Uma would be facing her old political adversary in the battleground of Uttar Pradesh, where Digvijay Singh is in-charge of the Congress affairs with Rahul Gandhi as the mascot.

If other estranged leaders like Sanjay Joshi and K N Govindacharya return to the party fold this will be an unmistakable signal that the party is reverting back to its core political constituency of Hindutva. Hints of this were available to the BJP’s national executive held in Lucknow recently when it reiterated its commitment to build the Ram temple at Ayodhya — an issue that the party seemed to have put on the back burner after the demolition of the disputed structure in 1992. Shorn of a sharply defined ideology and lacking an astute leadership, the BJP is behaving as the B team of the Congress, instead of performing the role of a combative Opposition. It needs to get back its organisational élan and ideological sharpness to convince the people that it presents a viable alternative to the Congress