JOIN USThe replacement of Vijay Rupani with Bhupendra Patel in Gujarat is the third change of chief minister in a BJP-ruled state in the last two months, after the appointment of Pushkar Dhami and Basavaraj Bommai in Uttarakhand and Karnataka. The BJP also found a new chief minister in Himanta Biswa Sarma after the recent Assembly elections in Assam. These are states where the party is well entrenched and so the turnover sends some clear messages about the change in politics happening in the states and at the central level. The changes in these states have been made well in time for the Assembly elections to be held sooner or later, but before the next Lok Sabha elections, and the party wants the new leaders to settle down in government before the elections. But it will be noted that the new chief ministers are not leaders with any large political base and following.
The exit of Vijay Rupani was in the air for some time as his government’s poor performance in Covid management was very obvious and would have created a strong anti-incumbency sentiment. But more importantly, the party wanted to appease the politically powerful Patel community before the elections. The community has provided a strong support base for the BJP but was aggrieved that there was no one from it as chief minister, except for a brief period. There were other grievances also and the party could not have gone to the elections with the community in a restive mood. But Bhupendra Patel is almost a greenhorn, a first-time MLA with no administrative experience. This underscores the high command culture that has taken hold of the BJP. Chief ministers are nominated and appointed, as in the Congress, and no longer elected. Being nominees, they will be beholden to the central leadership.
This is in consonance with the party’s approach to elections in the recent past. Even state elections are fought with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the leader and with campaign strategies and themes decided at the central level. All state parties and governments are under the central leadership’s control, except perhaps in UP, where the personalities and circumstances are different and it is risky for the party to upset the present arrangement. The party has also tried different experiments in social engineering, with castes as counters, in different states. While it has attempted to widen its caste base with helpful policies that addressed larger groups like the intermediate castes, it has also tried to give leadership positions to persons from smaller castes. These experiments have had indifferent and diverse results. In Gujarat, it has decided to go back to the party’s base for leadership, too, leaving nothing to chance, though the leader’s surname will only be in name.