Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s mouthpiece Organiser in its latest issue has predicted a “Hung House” in the 17th Lok Sabha and pronounced the inevitability of governance paralysis in the next six months.
It said, “A governance paralysis for the next six months will be inevitable. Most disconcerting would be the likelihood of a “hung Lok Sabha that would imply political instability which would be adverse from the national security point of view.”
Who could have imagined the media speculating that days of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister are numbered, that the countdown has started and even if the BJP manages to cobble a majority in next year’s general election, Narendra Modi may not remain the Prime Minister?
But the defeat of the BJP in the three crucial state elections to the Congress in direct contests has sent alarm bells ringing. All political pundits were earlier agreed that Prime Minister Modi and BJP could not expect to repeat the performance in 2014. BJP, they held, could lose a minimum of 50 and a maximum of 100 seats in the Lok Sabha and that it would have to make up the loss from new BJP turfs like the North-East, Odisha and West Bengal.
What has taken even the pundits by surprise, however, are rising voices within the BJP and the RSS in favour of projecting a new prime ministerial candidate. Not surprisingly, letters have been written to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat that both Modi and Amit Shah had become liabilities and that the Nagpur MP and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari be projected as an alternative. His proximity to RSS leaders and headquarters at Reshambagh at Nagpur is of course an advantage.
Gadkari himself has been striking independent notes. At a time when the Government was gloating over what it believed to be the impending extradition of Vijay Mallya from London, Gadkari spoke up and said that it was inappropriate to describe a one-time loan defaulter as a scamster and fugitive. He also left nothing to imagination when he asserted that some people in the BJP loved to speak and that such people need to learn to speak less. While he pointedly said he was joking, nobody was left with any illusion about the leaders he was referring to.
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