As the BJP’s new national office-bearers gathered at the party’s national headquarters in Delhi last week for a closed-door meeting, the mood in the room was far from triumphant.
The leaders met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Nitin Nabin to discuss the new plan of action. Modi struck a mild but firm note, advising the office-bearers not to grow complacent on the back of repeated electoral wins in the last couple of years, sources said. Nabin, they added, cautioned that power had created a distance between the party’s leaders and people.
The leaders who were at the briefing in Delhi said the PM exuded confidence about the new team and had sent out a clear message. “He sat for hours and listened to each of the new office-bearers. He made them talk about themselves and how they came up in the party,” said a leader who was at the meeting.
“PM saab has always been clear. He had told us earlier that while the angst against the UPA brought us into power in 2014, it was the initiatives taken for the poor and the country’s security that brought us back in 2019. In 2023, he told us that the BJP had to fight the Lok Sabha election on organisational strength. His message was that the party leaders and the cadre have to be back at the forefront and we cannot take our wins for granted,” the leader added.
The Gen-Z disconnect?
The meeting came at a time when there is a sense of growing unease among sections of the leaders and the cadre in various states.
Some BJP insiders said uncertainty about the new organisational team — it took months for it to be put in place — and the long-speculated government reshuffle had created a climate of uncertainty among several senior leaders. As one state BJP leader described it, this put several such leaders in a “self-preservation mode,” and that indecisiveness percolated down to the states. “With uncertainty and anxiety over one’s own position, each senior leader in the party and the government has been in a self-preservation mode. The fear of change has been hanging over their head. While governance becomes a casualty, ordinary karyakartas feel frustrated,” said the leader.
To add to the BJP’s concerns, even the RSS has conveyed the “growing disconnect” and the “fatigue factor” among state leaders, it is learnt.
A senior BJP leader with deep ties to the Sangh said that public statements by some senior ministers on the Gen-Z protests and their issues appeared to have backfired. “When the ministers say the issues raised by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) and its leaders are correct, but they had ulterior motives, how does such an argument hold? If the issue is correct, how does it matter who raises it? Such responses could create an impression that the party or the government does not have better arguments and the minister’s remark would just keep the Opposition leaders and the critics in the limelight.”
Several leaders are also apprehensive about how deploying Union Ministers to universities will play out. “If a minister visits a university, basically a domain of students and democratic space, a monologue will be disastrous. If he or she enters into a dialogue, each response of the minister may turn into a huge spectacle if it is not handled with care or utmost maturity. It may end up creating scenes for the CJP and other Opposition to target the party and the government,” said a leader.
BJP leaders said the party had been receiving feedback along similar lines from across the states on the youth protests that have now happened in Patna after the CJP-led protests in Delhi and then the demonstrations in Ranchi. Party leaders pointed out that the discourse had shifted to basic issues such as education and jobs. In a state such as Uttar Pradesh, which is slated to hold polls early next year, this anxiety over the Gen-Z disconnect has become enmeshed with a larger concern over the internal factionalism and friction along caste lines. In UP, voters in the Gen-Z age bracket of 18-29 years are estimated at over 20% of the electorate and issues such as alleged irregularities in recruitment exams and unemployment have made them volatile, said BJP leaders from the state.
