The bottom line of Arvind Kejriwal’s much hyped expose against Nitin Gadkari came towards the end of the press conference today: “It is even more regrettable that the BJP has amended its constitution to give another three-year term to him as party president.”
If the question is whether Kejriwal has been able to make a dent in Gadkari’s prospects of formal “re-election”, the answer is no. That latter seem to have emerged stronger than before, at least for now. Though immediately after Kejriwal finished his media briefing Gadkari came out to defend himself on what he called “chillar” (retail) accusations, the public portrayal of unity in the BJP on the issue came when the two Leaders of Opposition in Parliament, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, came to the party headquarters, 11 Ashoka Road, to take on Kejriwal charges.
Sample Sushma Swaraj’s statement, whose relations with Gadkari has at best been sweet and sour in the past three years that he has been the party president and she the Leader of Opposition: “Our party, our cadre and our leadership are with him. If he (Kejriwal) is pained by the fact that Gadkari is being given a second consecutive term then that should not be the brief of India Against Corruption.”
In the process of defence came another public declaration of giving another term to Gadkari. So far, the senior leaders were saying, at least on record, that the amendment in party constitution was only an enabling provision and with no particular individual in mind. Sushma had visited Gadkari’s residence to discuss counter strategy before Kejriwal began his media briefing.
If the BJP appeared to have come prepared with facts, Kejriwal himself is to be blamed. He and other team members had dropped enough hints in the past few days about who their next target was. Unlike Robert Vadra expose, where he took the political establishment, more so the Congress, by surprise and his stress was more on substance less on rhetoric, today he appeared to be more on rhetoric less on substance.
Moreover, he built so much of hype around his “second expose” that the substance couldn’t really match with the expectation.
The main opposition party, which sometimes openly, sometimes tacitly supported IAC, came out all guns blazing against it when it realised that it was no longer just building an anti-Congress mood but was now into the game of eating into the opposition space, as also its social constituency.
Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, who during the Lokpal movement took up their cause within and outside Parliament, used a rather hard retaliatory strike: “The hitman (Kejriwal) has scored a self goal. A mountain was sought to be built of what was not even a molehill. Any organisation which calls itself a crusader need to strong on credibility. Today the IAC has damaged credibility of civil society at large.”
Both Sushma and Jaitley reiterated what Gadkari had said earlier – that the land in question was wasteland that was given by Maharastra government for a 11-year lease to set up a sugarcane farming nursery laboratory and sell the samples to Vidharbha farmers at a subsidised rate.
The BJP leadership had decided that to send a message they may have differences of opinion internally on certain issues, including on Gadkari’s handling of issues at various levels, but with assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat round the corner and the air thick with talks of early parliamentary polls it be must seen to be standing united.
The second question is whether Kejriwal succeeded in causing a dent in the BJP’s supposed fight against corruption, the answer could be yes and no. He raised an issue that could be some food for thought: can a businessman ever be a good politician?
But then there were some ironies. If he and BJP were on one side against Vadra, today he and Congress were on same side against Gadkari. Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh had for long been targeting Gadkari’s business links. If till yesterday, the Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari called Kejriwal as “B Team of BJP, today Gadkari called him a “Congress agent” who was trying to divide opposition space to benefit Congress.
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