Shah and Modi have egg on their faces over Uttarakhand debacle

BJP national president Amit Shah's and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's joint plan to use even backdoor entries to realise their dream of Congress-Mukt Bharat has badly backfired in Uttarakhand.

On May 10, chief minister Harish Rawat managed to defeat Modi-Shah's plans and proved his majority on the floor of the Uttarakhand Assembly. He achieved this huge feat by enlisting support of 33 MLAs to BJP's 28 by getting six MLAs' support from outside his party, including two from the BSP, and finally bringing down the curtains on the two-month-old political crisis.

In a way, the duo's exercise appeared to be rather foolhardy as the Uttarakhand Assembly elections are less than 10 months away and a massive anti-incumbency is working against the ruling Congress. In such a situation, to try out methods which are resonant of the short-cut ways of the Congress to achieve power undemocratically, that too in sharp contrast with clean governance that Modi is providing in Delhi, was a sure-shot recipe for an image-management disaster.

True, it was Harish Rawat and another Congress leader who were caught in sting operations offering money to their own party rebel MLAs asking them to come back. In contrast, there was no proof of BJP offering remunerations to the Congress MLAs.

However, when BJP general secretary in-charge of UK, Kailash Vijayvargiya, had the MLAs flown to Delhi from Dehradun on a plane and made a victory sign before the media, he was certainly not bringing glory to his party whose plank hinges on clean politics.

Says a senior BJP leader in Delhi: "BJP should have done the operation in a subtle manner."

Strategically, too, the operation was a failure as despite its best attempts the BJP couldn't bring more than nine MLAs out of the Congress. Rather, Shah and Vijayvargiya left their flanks open after initial efforts, busy as they were with elections in West Bengal, Assam and other states.

The internal wrangling of the BJP, too, was responsible, according to reliable party sources. 73-year-old former chief minister of Uttarakhand, Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, was keener on the operation as this was his last chance to become the CM once again.

"There was lack of oneness amongst the BJP strategists due to various personal and other reasons", says a party source.

Observes a political pundit: "The objectives behind the operations were questionable from day one. There are three CM contenders in the Uttarakhand BJP itself and there were three more in the lot of nine MLAs who crossed over to the BJP. So, BJP was accumulating a burden of ambitions when its victory few months down the line was guaranteed in the coming Uttarakhand Vidhan Sabha polls."

Shah and Vijayvargiya also failed to read the mind of the judiciary despite ample clues and never thought that the latter would take the entire political matter into its hands and get into the job of proving majority.

The Uttarakhand BJP leader and the party's national spokesperson, Anil Baluni, however, disagrees. "It was just luck which didn't favour us. Otherwise, all our steps were perfect. And it was Harishji who was offering money to his own MLAs and not us. We just extended support to the disgruntled MLAs who were fed up with Rawat government's corruption. We tried to bring down the government on the issue of corruption. Rawat's is one of the most corrupt governments."

According to sources close to Shah, the "Operation topple Uttarakhand government" was taken up as part of the BJP's game-plan to tighten all the sources that provide funds to the Congress. Uttarakhand government is one of the prime sources of party funds to the fast shrinking Congress in the country.