In the West Bengal Assembly elections, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has emerged as the second most important leader in the country after Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Described as the modern version of Chanakya, Shah is, undoubtedly, a strategist par excellence, and someone who knows how to work at the micro-level and produce results.
The determination with which Shah accomplished the impossible Mission Bengal, puts him ahead of every other contender in his party.
The charge against the Centre and the Election Commission by the outgoing Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Banerjee in the state is that the election had been stolen, but it may take years to establish any wrongdoing, if at all there was such a thing.
However, the BJP, which had no chance to be in power in this most crucial border state till 10 years ago, has done something unthinkable. The Union Home Minister, who is a “nuts and bolts” man, and could play an important role in national politics for many years in the future, is certainly a very formidable opponent to have for all the Opposition parties.
The Bengal election also saw Mamata Banerjee, the relentless street fighter losing a second time to her own creation, Suvendu Adhikari, who shall now be her successor and the BJP’s first Chief Minister of the state. Incidentally, politics has taken a full circle and Bengal from where the Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder, Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, started his politics, is now virtually saffron.
Mukherjee was an eminent leader, who, incidentally, also ensured that after the partition, Calcutta did not fall in the terrain of East Pakistan. His death in Srinagar on June 23, 1953 remains shrouded in mystery, but along with the late Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, he provided the ideological dimension to the Jana Sangh and to some degree to its current avatar, the BJP.
It is for the first time since 1972 that Bengal will have the same party ruling in the state and centre. The border state has always chosen to elect an alternate party and somewhat like Punjab, another border state, has by and large chosen a contrary path. This time has been different and Punjab too is now being eyed by the BJP as its next target, a task which could prove to be even more difficult than Bengal.
Coming back to Amit Shah, he has perfected the art of knocking down the Opposition with the help of its own erstwhile members. The BJP has been practising “Operation Vibheeshan” for many years though the media and its opponents, erroneously refer to it as “Operation Lotus”. Yes, in the end, Lotus is the winner but it has mostly been with the help of former rivals who switched sides. Suvendu Adhikari has been chosen to lead the new government not because he possesses any kind of extraordinary administrative skills; the governance may be guided from New Delhi through bureaucrats or functionaries of the RSS. He shall, as the Chief Minister, ensure that his erstwhile party, the Trinamool Congress gets decimated completely. Having been Mamata’s right hand man at one time, he knows every prominent Trinamool worker and also knows how to either win them over or neutralize them in the fight which has not ended as yet. The credit for identifying him and using him to his maximum potential goes to Shah, who had earlier in Assam used the services of Himanta Biswa Sarma effectively.
Sarma, a former Congressman, who was encouraged to leave his own party by three senior Congress leaders, after he felt humiliated during his meeting with Rahul Gandhi, is a prominent face of the saffron brigade in the east.
Amit Shah always described him as prize catch and when he inducted Arvinder Singh Lovely, former Delhi Congress chief into the BJP, the first time, he had stated that after Sarma, Lovely was the biggest acquisition of the BJP. It is another story that Lovely went back to the Congress but is now a BJP MLA from East Delhi. He would have been rewarded more, had he not done a “ghar wapsi” earlier. Suvendu Adhikari is expected to consolidate the BJP’s position in Bengal while simultaneously destroying the Trinamool Congress politically. Whether that happens or not, only time shall tell.
So far as “Operation Vibheeshan” is concerned, it carries on. The next CM of Puducherry is also a former Congressman, who was driven out because of Narayanasamy, who plotted against him along with Sonia Gandhi’s former political advisor, the late Ahmed Patel. Significantly, in virtually every state, the BJP has managed to bring in former Congress leaders. In Madhya Pradesh, a group of MLAs owing allegiance to Jyotiraditya Scindia switched sides, ensuring the fall of the Kamal Nath government in the state. Likewise, many leaders in almost every region joined the BJP. In Punjab, which goes to polls later this year, former Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh and many of his close aides are now in the BJP. The BJP leadership expects them to help the saffron brigade in changing the political map of the state.
Amit Shah has been playing an important role in all such operations. While PM Modi continues to be the unquestioned number one in his party, Shah is now clearly placed as the number two, ahead of many others. He is undoubtedly the “Chanakya” of the BJP and destiny could give him much more. Between us.
