dailyO
Politics

Why Naresh Agrawal will do more harm than good to BJP

Advertisement
Panini Anand
Panini AnandMar 13, 2018 | 13:21

Why Naresh Agrawal will do more harm than good to BJP

Jawaharlal Nehru spent his political life with a rose in his buttonhole. Atal Bihari Vajpayee took the lotus to mean everything for him. LK Advani, despite all the setbacks and humiliations, has neither been able to give up the lotus, nor has the neglected, sidelined Shahnawaz Hussain.

But not all politicians have such limitations. There are others who choose not a solitary bloom, but a whole bouquet of parties and ideologies. They pick whichever flower takes their fancy, whenever. One such versatile leader is the soon-to-be BJP Rajya Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh, Naresh Agarwal.

Advertisement

Agrawal, once he found his road to Parliament from the Samajwadi Party blocked, promptly stomped out and joined the BJP. However, this is not the first time Agarwal has changed party colours. The "Ram Vilas Paswan of Uttar Pradesh", he switches parties before a decade passes. His road to the BJP orginated from the Congress, the Loktantrik Congress, the BSP and then the SP.

pti-body_031318011309.jpg
Image: PTI photo

So will Agarwal’s defection come as a major blow to the party? At first glance, it may seem so, as with Agarwal’s exit go the hopes of the SP sending the BSP’s candidate to the Rajya Sabha. But in the long run, it is not the SP, but the BJP who is going to be harmed by Agarwal.

Agarwal began his stint in the BJP with a sexist comment against Jaya Bachchan, saying the SP preferred “someone who danced in films” over him as the Rajya Sabha candidate. The remark led to protests within the BJP, with Sushma Swaraj, Smriti Irani and Rupa Ganguly slamming Agarwal.

The second factor is that for the past many years, the BJP cadre in Hardoi have been fighting against Agarwal. Now, they will be forced to work for him. This will certainly not go down well with the ground-level workers. While this may seem a minor trouble to the BJP leadership at present, a cadre-based party can ill-afford to miff its workers.

Advertisement

Relief to SP

The Samajwadi Party workers and top brass, on the other hand, must be celebrating Agarwal’s quitting as good riddance.

It is true that the party cadre is unlikely to be happy over the selection of Jaya Bachchan as the Rajya Sabha candidate. The decision has come in for criticism even outside the party. But no one, apart from maybe Ram Gopal Yadav, is likely to mourn Agarwal’s departure, and for good reasons.

The first reason is that Agarwal was by no means a vote-fetcher for the SP. Apart from his seat and his influence in Hardoi, he had nothing to offer the party. Agarwal’s caste has traditionally been a BJP votebank, and hardly ever chooses the SP. Thus, Agarwal joining the BJP is a zero loss situation for the SP.

Nor is Agarwal likely to hike the BJP’s vote tally, because that votebank is already in the party’s kitty. Moreover, as Agarwal stands for no ideology, he does not have dedicated voters of his own. All he has had is the voterbase of whichever party he has been associated with.

Secondly, with Agarwal’s exit, Akhilesh Yadav has sent out a message to Ram Gopal Yadav and his group that he won’t let anyone else dominate over the party. It is also an invitation to those who had been sidelined due to Agarwal, and who had a problem with his status and influence within the party. At least these people will now look at Akhilesh in a more positive light.

Advertisement

There is, however, one loss to the SP. Without Agarwal, the party will have no one to speak up for it with a powerful voice in the Rajya Sabha. In the past few years, Agarwal had emerged as an efficient and influential parliamentarian. He was among the prominent Opposition voices, who debated well with cogent points. Thus, a strong voice that spoke for the SP in Parliament will now be speaking against it.

But for Akhilesh Yadav’s party, fighting the BJP in the electoral battlefield and hiking up its vote tally is a bigger challenge than visibility in the Rajya Sabha.

Also, Jaya Bachchan will pose no headache for Akhilesh in the Rajya Sabha, and will do as he wants her to.

Agarwal, on the other hand, can prove to be an actual risk for the BJP, in two ways.

First is that the party cadre will not be able to accept Agarwal easily. The cadre has been working for leaders like Vinay Katiyar, who has been sidelined to elevate Agarwal. The grassroots workers are unlikely to be enthused by this.

The party will be repeatedly embarrassed by the anti-BJP and other controversial statements that Agarwal has made in the past, and is likely to keep making. Moreover, no one can say how long he will stay with the BJP. Once he quits, it will come as another blow to the morale of the BJP and RSS cadre in Hardoi.

On his part, Agarwal seems to have forgotten the lot of others who have defected to the BJP before him. Jitan Ram Manjhi, Swami Prasad Maurya, Ram Achal Rajbhar, far too many leaders were brought into the BJP with much alacrity and fanfare, and as quickly consigned to the margins.

This new relationship, thus, seems likely to benefit neither Agarwal nor the BJP.

(Translated from Hindi by Yashee.)

Last updated: March 15, 2018 | 08:26
IN THIS STORY
Please log in
I agree with DailyO's privacy policy