In the Jatinga Valley in Assam, about 330 kilometres from the state capital of Guwahati, a mysterious phenomenon takes place every year between September and November. Thousands of birds, including local and migratory species, fly around the village at night and crash into buildings and trees, committing suicide.
A similar syndrome has gripped the Delhi state Bharatiya Janata Party as far as contesting the assembly polls go. In the midst of all the heat and dust raised by the release and resignation of former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and elevation of his trusted aide Atishi as Chief Minister, one may have missed out on the talk of the BJP leadership planning to pitch former Union Minister Smriti Irani as the face of the party in the polls in February-March next year.
A speculative story released by a news agency last week mentioned that Smriti Irani’s increasing involvement in Delhi BJP activities has sparked speculation about her potential role in local politics ahead of the 2025 assembly elections. Irani, who was born and raised in Delhi, has been actively participating in the party’s membership drive, launched on September 2. She is overseeing the drive in seven of the 14 district units in the city.
It’s seldom that a news agency releases a speculative story, however, in this case, it’s done as part of the media launch of Irani. Her rehabilitation has become imminent following her rout in the last Lok Sabha polls and her return to UP politics being unlikely.
If this is the case, the Delhi BJP may just be preparing for another suicidal move in the upcoming assembly polls. Such initiatives in 2020 and 2015 proved counterproductive, leaving the BJP as a single-digit party in the assembly. On both occasions, the assembly polls had followed the Lok Sabha polls, where the party had won seven out of seven seats.
This time too, despite winning all seven Lok Sabha seats, the BJP may make a Jatinga-like move by bringing in a rank outsider as the party’s face. After the defeat in the assembly polls in 2020, the organ of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) wrote that the state units should not expect Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to win all elections for them.
But then launching Irani in Delhi as the party face has to be a decision of the powerful duo, which somehow has never trusted the local leaders of having the capacity to deliver. The rout in 2020 was for the reason that the state unit for the past four years was led by Manoj Tiwari, who is for sure not an organisation man.
A political traveller, Tiwari started his career with the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh, hobnobbed with the Congress for a while, and finally took refuge in the BJP. He may be a third-term MP but his traction with the rank and file of BJP workers has never been very encouraging.
The worse was the experiment the party did in 2015 assembly polls by foisting former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer Kiran Bedi as the party’s chief ministerial face. Bedi, though much respected socially, was not cut out for the rough and tumble of state-level politics. She could never gel with the workers, so much so that her poll manager withdrew in the midst of the campaign. No wonder she lost from Krishna Nagar seat, which was thought to be a BJP citadel.
In 2020, Kejriwal managed to beat anti-incumbency by an intelligent media and campaign plan, which was complemented by the bouquet of freebies he offered to a large number of voters. Realising that they had little to offer as a counter on this count, the BJP went berserk with its aggressive Hindutva campaign, which at times included brutalising the youth and the students’ community.
This happened in 2020 because the Delhi unit was led by a celebrity leader who had no connect with the issues of Delhi and squandered the opportunity of returning to the Delhi Secretariat 22 years after it exited in 1998. Five years down the line in 2025, they may just be planning again to give Delhi away on a platter.
