Is Giriraj Singh pushing the envelope too far for BJP?

BJP’s motor mouth minister Giriraj Singh seems to be landing his party in trouble, which is seeking to smoothen its rough edges after two back to back defeat in state polls—in Jharkhand in December last year and in Delhi this month.

The country is paying the price for failure to send Muslims to Pakistan and bring Hindus to India after the Islamic State came into being at the time of Independence, Singh said, triggering a row.

Singh later in a tweet drew the parallel of former President A P J Abdul Kalam, who got the top job during the tenure of NDA’s first Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the alleged instigator of Shaheen Bagh protests Sharjeel Imam. “Not Sharjeel we need Abdul Kalam (Sharjeel Nahin Abdul Kalam Chaahihe),” he tweeted.

Citing the controversial tweets of AIMIM leaders Akbaruddin Owaisi and Waris Pathan, Singh said,” I want to ask from the tukde tukde gang of Congress and RJD. Do they want to make India a Pakistan.”

Singh might have pushed the envelope too far this time with his remarks that all Muslims should have been sent to Pakistan in 1947 even after last week’s categorical snub to him by none other than the BJP chief JP Nadda who asked him to eschew from making any further controversial remarks after Singh called Deoband the ‘gangotri’ of terrorists. Nadda had summoned him for his recent remarks over religious conversion incident.

BJP’s discomfiture stems from the fact that it is going to face a very crucial state election in Bihar, where it has so far failed to emerge as a force to win and form a government on its own. In Bihar, the BJP has repeatedly fallen back on the personality Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and welcomed him back in the NDA fold in 2017 with open arms even after a bitter walkout by Kumar from the alliance four years ago in 2013 over the projection of Narendra Modi as its face.

Kumar later also repeatedly maintained his "ally with a difference" identity flagging its reservations on issues like Uniform Civil Code and NRC and having trashed the hardline remarks of BJP leaders like Giriraj Singh and Ashwini Choubey in Bihar. Despite all this, BJP agreed to fifty formulae to divide the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar in 2019 general elections even as JDU had won just two Lok Sabha seats in 2014 general elections.

Clearly the BJP wants to keep Kumar on board and now also avert a third consecutive defeat in state polls ahead of the all important assembly election for West Bengal in 2021 and Uttar Pradesh 2022.

The difference in NDA in Bihar over the hardline approach of Singh was also evident as Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s son Chirag Paswan, who heads LJP, a key ally of NDA in Bihar, was quick to disapprove the BJP leader’s remarks.

“Many times our coalition partners say things which the LJP does not at all agree with. This one (Giriraj Singh's statement) is such an example,” Chirag Paswan, who was instrumental in LJP walking out of UPA and joining the NDA in 2014, said.

He also went to say that had a person of his party spoken in this fashion, he would have taken responsibility and acted as he flagged his view that the coalition had to suffer on account of divisive remarks.

After Delhi election loss, none other than Home Minister and former BJP chief Amit Shah accepted that ‘goli maro” (shoot the traitors) remarks and drawing parallel of Delhi polls with India-Pakistan match might have damaged the party prospects in the state election.