How Subramanian Swamy is giving BJP MPs sleepless nights

Very rarely in Parliament do you see the kind of debut, which Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy has made. Controversial, centre-stage, right in your face and pandering to his core constituency, Swamy has literally set the Rajya Sabha ablaze.

Taking the bull by its horn, Swamy mentioned Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s name in AgustaWestland and took the upper house by storm. But if you thought that the Congress is the only party which is worried about Swamy’s ascension or hogging the parliamentary limelight, then you are completely wrong. A major simmering is going on within BJP about the way Swamy came, saw and conquered. Senior MPs and ministers are a bit wary with the ease with which Swamy has occupied media space and how he is inching to acquire more space in the government.

A source close to a minister of state in the Modi government said that on Wednesday, a day after taking the oath as Rajya Sabha MP, Swamy asked him why was he not invited to the BJP parliamentary party meet on Tuesday. According to him, the minister had to explain to Swamy that the invitation to MPs and all were done by the whip and he was not the point person.

The said conversation lasted for about five minutes, following which the MoS was left clearly very uncomfortable. This assertion, coupled with the kind of exploding media attention, which Swamy has been getting, has made a lot of them uneasy.

A senior BJP minister, who would regularly come out of gate no 12 of Parliament, is generally used to a posse of reporters and camerapersons tripping over each other for a sound byte. ThisThursday it was quite different. When he came out of the gate no 12, he found nobody running to him. When he looked to his left, he saw at least 10-15 reporters in line to do a small interview (TT, as said in television parlance) with Dr Swamy.

This reporter had just finished his interview with Swamy, when this senior minister came out of gate no 12 and walking toward his car. When I went up to him to enquire about AgustaWestland and other things, he smiled with his eyes staring at Swamy’s direction and said “Naye shagufe ka maza lijiye” (enjoy the new theatre in town) and drove away.

This is not it. When an enraged Ghulam Nabi Azad, said in the upper house that “this man (Subramanian Swamy) doesn’t know the difference between street words and Parliament words”, little did he know that his grudge would find more resonance with the frustrated BJP MPs than those of the Congress.

Two BJP Rajya Sabha MPs, along with one spokesperson, were heard saying in the upper house gallery, “How can you have discussion in an environment like this and if it is allowed to go then all space will be occupied by one guy”. To this the other RS MP said: “It looks like that the new criterion for making it to the Rajya Sabha is street-smartness. The more street smart you are, the higher the chances of making it.”

There is also a section within the party which feels that the way both houses have functioned in this week, led by Subramanian Swamy, the chances of a rapprochement with the Congress is now next to nil.

A senior leader, on condition of anonymity, said “Arun Jaitley or Ravi Shankar Prasad or someone would have raised the AgustaWestland issue in a less cantankerous way. Don’t the top bosses know this man? His whole career is a testimony to the fact that he is a misguided missile. They should have resisted the RSS pressure.”

So love him or hate him, the way Subramanian Swamy has performed in the upper house of Parliament, the truth is that BJP MPs will have to bear with him for a long time to come.