Rift within BJP: Who’s backing Kirti Azad’s war against Arun Jaitley?
In the Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA) soap opera with Union finance minister Arun Jaitley and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal as the chief protagonists, the wild card or the joker in the pack is the BJP Lok Sabha MP Kirti Azad. And in true style of a soap opera that aims to grab maximum eyeballs, the wild card has been given a free run by the party leadership. It has kept viewers glued to prime time shows, exposing the internal rift in the BJP wide open.
What explains the inability of the BJP brass to manage Azad, if not silence him, while the party's lone wolf is merrily providing grist to the Kejriwal mill against the beleaguered finance minister? Jaitley is virtually the second most powerful minister in the Modi government even if he is officially not number two. Right?
One can understand Azad's passion for cricket and his penchant to rid the popular sport of corruption but what about the BJP leadership? Their ability to maintain a stoic silence on Azad's transgressions is amusing and curious. It's known that Azad has been carrying on a campaign against corruption in the DDCA for years but is it normal behaviour on the part of the ruling party to keep quiet and be perceived as giving a go-ahead to an MP targeting the finance minister?
Perhaps, Azad provided a clue to the party leadership's thinking on the matter when he revealed that BJP president Amit Shah had called him for a meeting over breakfast and offered him idli. And Azad had told Shah after the breakfast that idlis tasted fantastic. One can safely infer from Azad's comments that the party president had issued a no-gag order, or even if there was a gag order, Azad was openly defying it.
It's curious that while almost half of the members of the Modi cabinet turned up at the Patiala House court to show solidarity for Jaitley when he went to file a criminal defamation case against Kejriwal and other Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders in the DDCA case, none thought to it fit to call for a gag order against Azad.
The question is, what stops the BJP leadership from cracking down on Azad and allowing him to directly target Jaitley and, in the process, not only dent the image of the government but provide ammunition to the Opposition? It's one thing for a disgruntled Azad, Shatrughan Sinha and RK Singh, all senior MPs from Bihar, to take potshots at the party leadership during the heat of the Bihar Assembly elections and the party to look away but quite a different matter when an MP runs a campaign of corruption against the country's finance minister.
When Shah broke his silence on the entire issue, all he had to say was "AAP is trying to defame Arunji in a malicious fashion. BJP and the nation stand with Arunji." No word on Azad, not even a word of platitude. Nor any barb against the Congress even after Jaitley hit out against Azad stating that the BJP MP was hand-in-glove with the Congress leadership.
"One member of Parliament wrote to the Congress government. He (Azad) met Sonia Gandhi and they said we will fix Jaitley," the finance minister said in an interview.
Azad's self-righteous claim that "this is not personal or against one person. It is against corruption", is an old trick used by rivals in high-stake political games. Remember VP Singh's long campaign against Rajiv Gandhi in the Bofors gun scandal? From mid-1987 to end-1989, until Rajiv Gandhi lost the general election, not once did Singh use Rajiv's name. Yet the message was clear. Jaitley too, for that matter, has not named Azad while accusing him of being hand-in-glove with Sonia.
On the day when Jaitley filed the criminal defamation case against AAP leaders, Azad dared him to file one against him stating that he wouldn't have been raising the issue today had he (Jaitley) taken him to court earlier, implying that he wasn't backing down.
It's clear that Azad has the backing of powerful factions and senior leaders within the BJP to take on Jaitley. Who could those leaders be? Is it the faction led by foreign minister Sushma Swaraj? But what about the silence of Modi and Shah? Do they fear a larger rift within the party if they were to act against Azad?