Many sitting
MPs axed, but are the remaining crowd-pullers?
By Sushil Kutty
Was Union Home Minister Amit Shah keeping tabs on BJP Lok Sabha Members of Parliament all these gone five years? How about our vaunted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been working 17-18 hours every 24/7, did he also put sniffer canines behind BJP MPs and Union ministers who had been the chosen candidates for the 2019 general elections? Now, five years hence, the Modi-Shah duo is culling sitting MPs from the 2024 list and finding replacements for them. Prime Minister Modi is confident his dream tally of ‘370' will be met with a mixture of new and old names.
Actually, after a decade honing his skills in perception-management, Modi is the man with the magic wand. And if there are two people who cannot be replaced from the line-up of BJP candidates, they are Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, with BJP President JP Nadda also in the frame, purely for people's consumption; otherwise, it's hard to visualize Nadda stomping his preference on Modi and Shah. JP Nadda's survival instincts must be superhuman.
Ministers Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal and Anurag Thakur have made it to the BJP list. No surprises there though the electorate would like a break from Thakur and Goyal's strain of “pariwarvad”. But who's gonna tell Modi-Shah this, not the mainstream media, which eats out of Thakur's hands? Goyal will be fighting his first Lok Sabha election, and they say Goyal has been fielded from a “safe” seat. Gadkari is at home in Nagpur. But Haryana's ousted Chief Minister Manoharlal Khattar, who used to be Modi's motorcycle-rider during bygone years, has been fielded from the Karnal Lok Sabha constituency and he is not used to Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP's second list named candidates for 72 Lok Sabha seats and as many as 32 of the sitting MPs have been axed. Among them is the Union minister Darshana Jardosh. Ex-Ministers Sadananda Gowda and Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank' also couldn't trace their names in the list. It is like the Modi-Shah duo draw pleasure from deflating spirits. There are exceptions, though. And Tejasvi Surya happens to be one of them. The Karnataka Young Turk is not out of favour. Tejasvi Surya's mixture of public belligerence and private sycophancy worked.
Anurag Thakur will contest from Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh. Piyush Goyal has been given Mumbai North. Another specialty of the second list is the presence of former chief ministers. For example, Trivendra Singh Rawat and Basavaraj Bommai. Rawat has been given Haridwar in Uttarakhand and Bommai gets his shot from Haveri in Karnataka. Modi and Shah have been doing this sort of poll-juggling from the time of the Madhya Pradesh-Rajasthan-Chhattisgarh assembly elections.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is like a child who has found a new toy to play with. Point is, there is an entire group of people attached to a political leader, all of them with their present and future tied to the leader's fortunes. So, when the name of Union minister and Udupi Chikmagalur MP Shobha Karandlaje isn't axed, there is little shock. At least, she has a chance to be reelected. Her supporters will not ditch the BJP for the Congress.
For the record, the second list has 20 candidates from both Karnataka and Maharashtra; 7 from Gujarat and 6 candidates apiece from Haryana and Telangana. Also, five names for Madhya Pradesh, two for Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. All these chosen ones are destined to be part of Modi's ‘370'. In that case why labour over old and fresh names and why axe this or that MP when any Tom, Dick or Harry would win like Modi prophesied.
There's nothing special attached to Anurag Thakur's name nor to that of Tejasvi Surya. Nitin Gadkari and Piyush Goyal can be replaced with Ramlal and Shyamlal and both Ramlal and Shyamlal would win. At least, that is the “Modi guarantee”. In Gujarat five MPs have been dropped. Should we take it that the replacements of all the five would win as Modi is confident of winning 370 seats come what may? Out of 20 Karnataka candidates, nine MPs have been shown the door. This includes Karnataka BJP chief Nalin Kateel and Mysore Member of Parliament Prathap Simha, who signed the entry tickets of the “unemployed youth” who breached Parliament security.
In Delhi, East Delhi MP, cricketer Gautam Gambhir has been dropped. The assumption is Gambhir's replacement Harsh Malhotra won't even have to take guard to face the bowler coming over the wicket from the Parliament-end. Also, Northwest Delhi MP Hansraj Hans has given way to somebody named Yogendra Chandolia. The fact is, except Manoj Tiwari, the other six BJP MP candidates for Delhi are all vague strangers to the electorate. Modi and Shah are making a big show out of the BJP candidates lists when whether ‘370' would be met is the big question-mark.
(IPA Service)
