Why BJP is ignoring Sushil Modi in Bihar

It was back in May 2005, in the confines of Patna airport’s VIP lounge that a select group of BJP bigwigs from Bihar sat, arms folded, patiently waiting for Arun Jaitley, the then Bihar party in-charge to pronounce the inevitable.

They were at the airport to see off Jaitley, but almost all of them knew that the ace lawyer would not go without making that all-important declaration. Jaitley soon delivered the sucker punch. He told Gopal Narayan Singh, the then Bihar BJP president, to quit. A few minutes later, Gopal Narayan Singh fetched a paper and quietly tendered his resignation.

2005 was an electorally unique year for Bihar. The state witnessed two Assembly elections: first in February and the second in October after the first elected House was dissolved. BJP, then in alliance with Nitish Kumar, was obviously not satisfied with Gopal Narayan Singh, who had led the BJP in the first Assembly election, or the 38 seats that it had won in the February Assembly election.

As the BJP was desperate to raise its tally, it picked Sushil Modi, then a Lok Sabha MP from Bhagalpur, to succeed Gopal Narayan Singh as Bihar BJP chief. Three months later, the second Assembly poll of the year saw BJP’s tally rising to 55. It helped NDA stitch a simple majority that ended 15 years of the largely uninterrupted Lalu-led Jungle Raj in Bihar. It also heralded the era when Sushil Modi formally became BJP’s face in Bihar, as he manned the Deputy CM post for eight years in the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government.

Gopal Narayan Singh bounces back

Eleven years later, and as if in an uncanny twist of fate, the fortunes of Sushil Modi and Gopal Narayan Singh — two leaders known to have not been on the best of terms with each other — seem to have swapped positions once again on May 30, the same date when Sushil Modi had succeeded Gopal Narayan Singh as Bihar BJP chief in 2005.

On May 30 this year, instead of agreeing on Sushil Modi, someone the BJP Bihar Unit is believed to have recommended for a Rajya Sabha seat, the party central leadership picked the same Gopal Narayan Singh. On its given strength, the BJP could have won just one Upper House seat from Bihar, and Singh proved to be the lucky one.

Before his nomination to the Upper House in 2016, Gopal Narayan Singh last won an election in the 1977 Assembly poll. He was not even in the state core team. Why the BJP picked him is not known, but it may certainly have not been done to give more representation to the Rajput community. There are already two Union ministers (Radha Mohan Singh and Rajeev Pratap Rudy) from the community in the Narendra Modi Cabinet. Could it be a move to cut Sushil Modi down to size?

Gopal Narayan Singh’s somewhat surprise elevation to the Rajya Sabha also effectively ended hopes about the possible induction of Sushil Modi, BJP legislature party leader in Bihar and former deputy chief minister, in the Union cabinet. As expected, Narendra Modi had a Cabinet reshuffle in July first week, and there was no Sushil Modi there.

Though Mangal Pandey, the state BJP president, refused to acknowledge that he had made any recommendation to the central leadership about Sushil Modi’s nomination to the Rajya Sabha, he did not deny it either. The state BJP chief told India Today that the state election committee had a comprehensive discussion about legislative council and Rajya Sabha elections in Bihar.

“We also conveyed what we thought to the Central leadership. However, what we discussed and conveyed is the internal party matter. We cannot share it with you,” he said.

Incidentally, the Rajya Sabha twist in Bihar BJP Bihar episode - how everyone thought Sushil Modi was certain to get elevated to the Upper House and then to the Union Cabinet — seems like a precursor to what later happened in Gujarat when Nitin Patel had to settle for the deputy chief minister position after he gave television interviews as the chief minister-to-be.

But unlike Nitin Patel in Gujarat, Sushil Modi was restrained. He did not issue any statement, even though he too had received a good number of premature, and as it emerged, misplaced congratulatory messages from everyone, including party colleagues. But unlike Patel, Sushil Modi did not land any consolation prize either.

Has the BJP ignored Sushil Modi?

“Yes he has clearly been overlooked,” said a senior BJP leader and a former Cabinet minister of Bihar. It looks routine in some ways, and vindictive in others. The latter as BJP might have wanted to use Sushil Modi to stay rooted to Bihar to effectively counter Lalu and Nitish. But vindictive because Modi could have accomplished that with greater spunk had he been accommodated in the Union Cabinet.

Why target Sushil Modi?

It was in 2012 when Sushil Modi, then a deputy CM in the NDA-ruled Bihar, described Nitish Kumar as “PM material” at a time when then Gujarat chief minister and now prime minister, Narendra Modi, had started showing his national ambitions.

Though neither Sushil Modi nor anyone in the BJP would speak about it, a senior party leader points out how Nitish Kumar had once described Narendra Modi and Amit Shah as people who do not forget things easily.

During the undivided NDA days, Sushil Modi had a wonderful understanding with Nitish Kumar. He, however, quickly turned into a bitter Nitish critic the day JD-U snapped ties with BJP in June 2013. But, clearly Sushil Modi turned a Narendra Modi supporter more belatedly than the likes of Giriraj Singh, who had already been given a ministerial berth in the Union Government; a decision apparently spurred in reaction to his loyalty rather than any proven capabilities.

The Narendra Modi government has seven ministers from Bihar. Apart from LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan, the other two Cabinet ministers, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Radha Mohan Singh, are from the BJP. Of the four ministers of state, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Ramkirpal Yadav and Giriraj Singh are from the BJP whereas Upendra Kushwaha is from the RLSP.

Given his stature, everyone in the Bihar BJP unit expected that Sushil Modi’s induction into Union cabinet would have been a foregone conclusion had he been picked for the RS nomination. His experience of handling Bihar’s finance portfolio and later as chairman of GST empowered committee of state finance ministers would have come handy.

“A few members in the Union government may have been wary of having Sushil Modi in the Centre. They may have conveyed that Sushil Modi was indispensible for Bihar to counter the strong alliance of Nitish and Lalu. Only Sushil Modi is said to have the nuance and logic to match Nitish Kumar, as the Leader of Opposition Prem Kumar, though experienced, clearly lacks the skills. But, it ultimately seem to have worked against Sushil Modi,” said a top BJP leader in Bihar.

A senior BJP leader, however, claimed that everyone, including Sushil Modi were clueless about why he was ignored when it came to RS nominations. “Only the top two would know the exact reasons. And they have not conveyed anything to Bihar party leaders,” said another BJP leader in Patna.

Bihar off BJP’s radar?

A section of BJP leaders in Bihar links Sushil Modi’s marginalisation to party’s massive loss in Bihar Assembly poll. As a state which sends 40 Lok Sabha MPs, Bihar is bigger than Delhi, so is the party leadership's sense of hurt. The BJP central leadership today looks disillusioned and seems to have lost interest in Bihar at least for the time being. Even the incumbent BJP state president Mangal Pandey has been allowed to continue though his tenure ended in January this year.

BJP’s apparent loss of interest in post-election Bihar seems in sharp contrast to the intensive membership drive just before Lok Sabha polls and the subsequent micro-level finetuning of cadres last year. Now, instead of the holding crucial organisational polls, which could have energised a demoralised party, the central leadership has allowed status quo to prevail in Bihar.

Amit Shah’s stamp?

Sushil Modi’s marginalisation in Bihar BJP appeared visible during the Bihar Assembly polls. The party’s style of campaign in the state polls was in contrast to the one Narendra Modi carried out in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Shah, who was rooted in Uttar Pradesh during the Lok Sabha polls, was nowhere in the picture in Bihar and Narendra Modi - then the party's PM nominee - invariably accompanied Sushil Modi and Nand Kishore Yadav in his rallies.

In 2015 Assembly polls, however, when team Amit Shah took over, Sushil Modi and other state leaders took a backseat.

Even his critics credit Amit Shah as a relentless leader, who left no stone unturned in Bihar. But he basked in the attention, and spearheaded the Bihar Assembly campaign with bluster and bravado without naming a chief-ministerial candidate — the BJP president treated the Bihar Assembly polls like Lok Sabha polls. Since the Assembly results were announced, the central leadership has kept Bihar off the focus.

Will Sushil Modi revolt like Navjot Singh Sidhu?

Barely two months before Nitish stormed out of the BJP alliance in June 2013, when speculations grew about Sushil Modi switching sides in favour of Bihar CM, the BJP leader had dramatically declared that his corpse would leave the BJP.

Sushil Modi may be a loyal partyman, obsessed with the BJP ideology and somewhat consumed with a saffron conceit, but his loyalty appears to be his undoing. The 64-year-old politician, who has never lost an election in his career, is faced with a lost case.

“Though he is still called the tallest BJP leader, it will be a fair question to ask that if Sushil Modi cannot win himself a RS berth, how he would help supporters grow in politics,” said a BJP MLA. It is hightime for Modi to reboot his politics.

A section of Sushil Modi supporters also blame him for allowing others to corner him. Sushil Modi is much different from Navjot Singh Sidhu, which is why he is suffering too. “Anyone in his place would have sulked and made his displeasure clear to the party. But see what Sushil Modi did. He not only welcomed the party’s decision to pick Gopal Narayan Singh’s nomination for Rajya Sabha and sent a congratulatory message to his bête noire, but also accompanied him to the Assembly secretariat where he filed his nomination papers. Being loyal is fine, but accepting everything without raising questions is subservience,” said a senior BJP leader in Bihar.

Sushil Modi hasn’t lost touch with Nitish Kumar

In February 2015, when Nitish Kumar evicted Jitan Ram Manjhi and returned as chief minister, he took Sushil Kumar Modi, his former deputy Chief Minister, in a tight embrace at his oath taking ceremony. "Aise hi chalega? (Should we go the way we are going)." His former deputy returned the question with a smile. In November 2015 too when Nitish took oath after his resounding victory in Bihar, he told Sushil Modi how much he missed having him in the government.

In the nearly eight years of the JDU-BJP rule, Nitish and Sushil Modi were seen as architects of Bihar's turnaround story. While Sushil Kumar let Nitish walk away with the credit, the chief minister always praised his deputy's meticulous ways.

They are both very similar — good planners, always ready with figures, articulate and mostly politically correct. Their friendship goes back to a time when they were students — Sushil Kumar in Patna Science College and Nitish in Bihar College of Engineering — and participated in the JP movement, and even went to jail together.

Someone like Sushil Modi in the BJP is a counter that suits Nitish Kumar should Lalu become too domineering in the ruling alliance. Can there be a twist in the tale?