It has been a see-saw ride for the BJP since it formed an alliance government at the centre two years ago but victory in the Assam polls has helped it wrest back the political momentum it lost after deffeats in Delhi and Bihar. The victory has also helped the BJP emerge as a party with a noticeable pan-India presence while also brightening its prospects for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP victories in several state elections after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls have helped build the perception that the Narendra Modi government continues to enjoy the support of the people in various regions. In the last two years, the party has been able to install its chief ministers in Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Assam. It also emerged as the second biggest party in Jammu and Kashmir, where it is part of the ruling coalition.
(Published in 'Business Standard'
The BJP victories have also dealt a severe blow to Congress, which now has governments only in six states - with Karnataka being the only big state in its kitty. The party had won only 44 seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections - to the BJP's 282 in a 545-member house.
BJP leaders say that the victory in Assam will have an impact on national politics and help build its campaign for the crucial Uttar Pradesh assembly polls early next year.
"The Assam victory will have an immense impact on national politics. It has sparked off debate about surgery in Congress and has energised the BJP cadres for the Uttar Pradesh elections," BJP MP Jagdambika Pal told IANS.
Uttar Pradesh sends 80 MPs to Lok Sabha and will be among five states where assembly polls will be held early next year.
Party leader Tapir Gao said the BJP would also be looking for victory in Manipur next year.
The party's coming to power in Assam, its entry in Kerala assembly and being part of the ruling coalition in Jammu and Kashmir has made BJP a truly pan-India party. BJP has appears to have replaced Congress as the primary pillar of national polity.
BJP leaders say the party's performance in the future polls is directly linked to the people's perception about the Modi government's performance.
"As a ruling party and a government, we may be doing far better job. But we need to do a lot in terms of the perception battle," BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya said.
Neiphiu Rio, who is a Nagaland Peoples Front MP from Nagaland, said it was time to implement schemes as mere slogans will not help.
"I know about the intention of the Modi government. I know about the schemes for the northeast and poor people in general. But now it is time to implement, mere slogans won't help," Rio told IANS. The NPF supports the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.
Former Lok Sabha secretary general Subash C. Kashyap said that Modi has to deliver for his party.
"Prime Minister Modi does not have an excuse for failure. He will have to deliver both for himself and his party. The Modi government had come as a breath of fresh air," Kashyap said.
On the flip side, the BJP has had to tick off some of its own MPs for remarks that created controversies and sought to take away focus from governance. There also have been controversies created by fringe elements.
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat's remarks about quotas, which the organization subsequently clarified, are believed to have cost BJP dearly in the Bihar assembly polls. The party also suffered as its campaign was seen to be aggressive and it had no local leader as chief ministerial candidate.
In Delhi, the party projected a chief ministerial candidate days before the assembly polls and this boomeranged.
The successive defeats in Delhi and Bihar last year had cast a doubt in party circles over the electoral strategy of Modi and BJP president Amit Shah.
But Shah apparently learnt from party's mistakes in Delhi and Bihar and took correctives in Assam.
As for parliament, With some key legislation such as the Goods and Services Tax
pending, a BJP party MP said the party's performance has been "lukewarm."
"The crucial GST Bill still stands stalled (due to lack of majority in Rajya Sabha). The new land bill did not come through," said the MP, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The party also faced allegations concerning its leaders Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhara Raje over their alleged help to former IPL chief Lalit Modi, who is being probed by the Enforcement Directorate. Arun Jaitley also faced allegations on the working of the Delhi and District Cricket Association and has filed a defamation case against Aam Aadmi Party leaders over the allegations.
'Foundation for BJP's Assam win was laid a generation ago'
Now that the BJP has captured power in Assam and credit is being given to meticulous campaigning and projection of the new leadership of Sarbananda Sonowal and Himanta Biswa Sarma, old-timers say the ground work had started almost a generation back.
"It was the likes of late Kushabhau Thakre and late Bansilal Soni who laid the foundation of making forays into Assam. Even thinking about BJP was discouraged in Assam in those days," said Angad Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader in Karbi Anglong region of Assam.
"I still remember meeting Thakre at a circuit house in Diphu in 1993. I told him BJP has no future because Assam power politics will be always divided between Congress and Asom Gana Parishad," he says.
"But Thakreji said in every disgruntled Congress supporter and leader we have a potential BJP worker. His words have turned prophetic."
Agree other BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders in the state. Some of them point out that even the likes of Vishwa Hindu Parishand (VHP) leader Pravin Togadia had visited rural Assam half a dozen times in the last two years.
Dipankar Dowarah, a local BJP leader in Guwahati, told IANS: "Both Thakreji and Soniji traveled across Assam, including rural areas like Naharkatia, Sorupathar, Borpathar, Hojai and Mariani."
Senior state BJP leaders Rajen Gohain and Ramen Deka, both members of the Lok Sabha, say it was once deemed wishful a thinking that the party would have an electoral base in Assam.
"When we spoke about forming government in Assam, even in the Central Hall of parliament, Congress and other leaders would say it is a case of building up a saffron castle in Assam sky. Today, we have proved them wrong," says Gohain, who represents Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency in the state.
Deka, who represents Mangoldoi, says: "But we had hopes. People were sincerely for BJP ideology and for a clean administration. Years of non-performance under successive Congress and AGP regimes left a space that our party could fit into well."
Agreeing with him, Prafulla Ketkar, editor of the RSS-run newspaper The Organiser says, "Assam has been longing for a strong and ideologically sound opposition party. After the students-turned-netas' outfit AGP failed the people and the Congress in last 15 years did not deliver much, the BJP had a chance."
But a winning team of party cadres and booth level management could not have been gathered in a few months' time, Ketkar said.
"It is a long process and besides former stalwarts like Soniji and Thakreji, the VHP and RSS also worked overtime." D. Tirthankar, a medico in Guwahati who had joined the RSS in 2000, bears out Ketkar.
"It was a solemn pledge by many of us from professional streams -- doctors, educationists and engineers -- who joined RSS to help BJP grow. The contribution of Sangh outfits in this record-breaking victory in Assam cannot be ignored," says Tirthankar.
About 25,000 RSS and VHP workers played their part rather actively in these elections, say sources in BJP's Assam unit.
"The RSS created four zones internally and deputed their men in Barak Valley, upper Assam, few tribal pockets, and central Assam to help BJP cover ethnically distinct regions," says local leader Dowarah.
"Ultimately the result was rewarding."
Former RSS leader Ram Madhav, who joined the BJP only in June 2014, and the likes of Nitin Gadkari, another RSS favourite, have in last two years held number of meetings with BJP MPs, state unit leaders and RSS shakha-pramukhs in the northeast.
Specific working formulae were arrived at for smooth coordination and all disgruntled elements were cautioned against attempting any kind of sabotage.
"The defeat of party veteran Kabindra Purkayastha in the Lok Sabha polls of 2014 did not go down well with the RSS and BJP leadership," a party leader had told Assam leaders while warning against sabotage attempts.
"The BJP had already established a toehold in Assam in the 1970s though Bengali-dominated Barak Valley. Despite that neither of the Barak Valley parliamentary seats, Karimganj and Silchar, came to BJP in 2014."
Something did change since 2014.
A good team work, in the ultimate analysis, on a good foundation laid two decades ago helped the saffron party steal the show in 2016.
(Nirendra Dev)
How to Curb Money Laundering? Study
In an attempt to prevent ill-gotten money from leaving the country’s shores, the government has asked its economic offences agencies to study the loopholes in the country’s banking laws, according to well-informed sources.
With the quantum of black money held by Indians abroad variously estimated at between $466 billion and $1.4 trillion, the idea is to get a fix on how the network operates. This will enable the government to crack the nexus and deliver on its promise of getting back such ill-gotten assets. Among the agencies roped in are the Enforcement Directorate, Serious Fraud Investigation Office, and the related wings of customs and the Reserve Bank of India.
Sources explained that such an exercise also became necessary after preliminary reports from the agencies and departments under the finance ministry reported that private banks in large numbers failed to present case studies by themselves about the modus operandi.
To prevent ill-gotten money from leaving the country, government agencies are looking for loopholes in banks. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has also been roped in to investigate.
Officials said a comprehensive study can also help in understanding how the flow of such money can be curbed while also equipping banks to have a strong anti-money laundering rules for clients, backed by law. During the latest US visit of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, coordination and cooperation among various countries to curb money laundering was at the core of his itinerary.
Even at the special session of the US on drugs, he dwelt on the nexus between illicit money, drugs and terrorism. India also wants to give inputs to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development to be able to come up with objective criteria soon to identify jurisdictions that did not cooperate towards a transparent financial system.
To prevent ill-gotten money from leaving the country, government agencies are looking for loopholes in banks. The move come after over 100 organisations were linked to off-shore accounts in the ‘Panama Papers’ leak.
‘Defensive steps’ are being considered against them. The move also comes against the backdrop of the recent global expose of International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and over 100 global media organisations on off-shore funds of some powerful people globally, based on millions of leaked documents of a Panama law firm.
The team of officers from the Central Board of Direct Taxes’ Financial Intelligence Unit, the board’s Tax Research Unit, and the Reserve Bank of India, is probing the expose about the ‘Panama Papers.’
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