Dhankhar's resignation and BJP's outsider syndrome

After Jagdeep Dhankhar’s high-profile exit, outsiders are likely to be kept away from sensitive assignments. Internal gate-keeping and stricter vetting of new entrants could be enforced.

The sudden resignation of Jagdeep Dhankhar as Vice President of India, on July 21, will trigger ripples across the political system.

It will impact the fate of other lateral entrants to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from other parties, rekindle debate about ‘insiders vs outsiders’ in the party, and lead to a reassertion of centralised political control.

The most proximate reason for Dhankhar’s unceremonious departure according to media reports is that he pre-empted the government’s moves on the removal of Justice Yashwant Verma.

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju had announced, on July 20, a day before the Monsoon Session of Parliament, that over 100 signatures from across the ruling and opposition parties had been collected for the impeachment of Justice Verma. It was clear that the motion would be tabled in the Lok Sabha as a bipartisan move.

Despite this information being available in the public domain, Dhankhar chose to consider a motion sponsored only by Opposition MPs in the Rajya Sabha, a day after Rijiju’s announcement. For reasons best known to him, it looked like he was trying to steal a march on the government’s move in the Lok Sabha.

By his actions Dhankhar gave the Opposition an upper hand in shaping the narrative about alleged corruption in the judiciary. The government, on the other hand, preferred to represent it as a cross-party initiative. His resignation, therefore, has been viewed as ‘political punishment’ by a government that thrives on centralised control over political narrative.

Ambitious men tend to be crafty and careful. This makes them calculating, considered, and conservative in their actions. Dhankhar’s political trajectory — from a small-time acolyte in Devi Lal’s durbar to the Janata Dal, the Congress, and the BJP before his appointment as governor of West Bengal and then Vice President of India — shows that he was an ambitious man. So, was it the hubris of high office that made him act so out of character?

He had, however, been overstepping his brief of late. In December, he embarrassed Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan who was sharing a public platform with him, by asking, “I request you to please tell me, what was promised to the farmer? Why was the promise not fulfilled? There was a movement last year... there is a movement this year too. The wheel of time is turning...". As vice president it was appropriate for him to hold a minister accountable in the Rajya Sabha as its chairman, but not so in a public meeting.

In retrospect, it is possible that the government might not have appreciated his frequent aggressive attacks on the higher judiciary as they pitched it into an unnecessary confrontation.

He also insisted on parity in protocol with the president, demanding high-end hotel suites during his foreign visits and the choice of aircraft.

His alleged frequent meetings with Opposition leaders of late may also have upset the government. Although some may present it as an expression of constitutional autonomy, the Narendra Modi government clearly did not buy this.

Dhankhar has certainly spoiled the political pitch further for dissenters in the BJP. Already most have a poor survival rate in politics after their exit. They are either politically finished or make their way back in humiliating circumstances. Some chose political oblivion like Balraj Madhok (he left the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, BJP’s predecessor), Uma Bharati, Kalyan Singh, and Madan Lal Khurana. Now dissenters will shrink further into their shells.

But Dhankhar has put most at risk those who came into the BJP from other parties — ‘outsiders’ with non-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), non-Hindutva background. Such outsiders in the BJP are expected to conform and not disrupt. Dhankhar’s meteoric rise and abrupt fall will be a lesson for all outsiders in the BJP’s ranks that their fortunes can be subject to rapid reversal when they challenge internal norms, and existing power structure.

Dhankhar’s exit comes after the marginalisation of several other prominent outsiders who fell afoul of the powers that be — Satyapal Malik, Yashwant Sinha, Maneka and Varun Gandhi to name a few. Equally there are examples of successful integration of outsiders who have jumped through hoops to prove their loyalty like, Arif Mohammad Khan, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Jyotiraditya Scindia, R P N Singh, and Jiten Prasada. The message in both cases is that outsiders must be compatible with the BJP’s centralised leadership, and their ideology must align with the core ideology of the party and the RSS.

After Dhankhar’s high-profile exit, outsiders are likely to be kept away from sensitive assignments. Internal gate-keeping and stricter vetting of new entrants could be enforced with preference for RSS cadre and BJP loyalists for constitutional roles over entrants from non-RSS and non-BJP backgrounds.

There could now be greater caution about experimenting with outsiders — both inductees from other parties and technocrats, who have been brought in directly as ministers as lateral entrants. How far this happens will become evident in the selection of Dhankhar’s successor. The choice of a deeply embedded BJP or RSS candidate for vice presidency will be an indication of a rethink in the BJP about the need to balance pragmatic politics with ideological and organisational compliance.

That the introduction of the impeachment motion in the Rajya Sabha caught the BJP’s political managers off-guard suggests that this incident indicates a failure of their political managers. Their inability to anticipate Dhankhar’s actions led to serious loss of face in the optics surrounding corruption in the judiciary and controlling the narrative around it.

The Dhankhar imbroglio shows that the much-touted centralised control of the BJP is actually inoperative in normal circumstances; that its political managers are lax but are quick to ask for punitive action against someone else over any perception that the government is losing control. That is why besides debating the debacle, the critical gaze should also be directed inwards — at insiders who failed to anticipate the political mess that the government now finds frustrating and must quickly clean up.

(Bharat Bhushan is a New Delhi-based journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.