Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: The Jat votes in Western UP, an effort to increase its tally in the South — especially Andhra Pradesh in addition to earning a political brownie point over the Congress — and an attempt to wooing agitating farmers are part of the considerations by the BJP in announcing the Bharat Ratna to Chaudhary Charan Singh, PVR Narasimha Rao and MS Swaminathan, party leaders said.
The Bharat Ratna to the three stalwarts, announced by the prime minister on Twitter, comes after the highest civilian award was conferred to Karpoori Thakur and LK Advani.
The Bharat Ratna to Chaudhary Charan Singh has already shown a political implication — the movement of the RLD into the NDA’s fold. The Samajwadi Party had earlier announced an alliance with RLD for the 2024 polls. RLD leader Jayant Chaudhary was effusive when asked by reporters if he will now move closer to the BJP.
An union minister of the BJP from the South said that this is in line with the BJP “honouring the deserving”.
“None of the three greats whose names were announced today are part of the BJP’s ecosystem. After the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, we do not to play out to the gallery for electoral considerations. Chaudhary ji was a ‘kisan neta’ and a ‘dharti putra’,” the minister said.
With the farmers agitating for more than three years over the implementation of Swaminathan’s formula for the Minimum Support Price, the move is aimed at pacifying them. Agitating farmers under the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, who have planned to come to Delhi as part of a protest on Tuesday, have also called for a Bharat bandh, a country-wide lockdown on February 16.
To soothe tempers, the BJP had dispatched union ministers — Piyush Goyal, Arjun Munda — to Punjab where they agreed to look at the MSP issue. Farmer leaders from the SKU said that their agitation will not end till their demands are met. “Jayant Chaudhary has taken a political decision, it’s his right to do so. And we will take care of our demands,” a farmer leader from the SJU said.
The political calculations of the BJP in giving out the Bharat Ratna to leaders was the loudest in its conferment to PV Narasimha Rao, who after Sardar Patel, is among the senior Congressmen that the BJP has sought to appropriate. The political symbolism of giving the award to Chaudhary Charan Singh, who formed the first non-Congress government at the Centre, was also not lost.
Rao’s Bharat Ratna comes amid fast unfolding developments centred on the state that involve the BJP. Two days ago, while TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu met the BJP leadership to discuss seats and alliance, on Thursday, Andhra CM called on the PM. The YSRCP and BJP both maintained that alliance talks were not part of the conversation.
The union minister, quoted above, said that the BJP is looking at an increased vote share in the Southern state. “In a few years, it will be a YSRCP versus BJP scenario,” the leader said.