The blunt fangs of the gar­gan­tuan BJP are show­ing in West Ben­gal, As­sam and Tripura. With the BJP cadres forc­ing “Jai Shri Ram”, down the throats of the peo­ple of West Ben­gal, in their zeal to up­set the rul­ing Tri­namool Con­gress Party of Mamta Baner­jee, the BJP’s of­fice-build­ing, free­bies of­fers and party posts dis­tri­b­u­tion spree is not with­out reprisal from its own cadres. In­dian PM Naren­dra Modi and HM Amit Shah would want us to be­lieve that de­spite the steep ebb in the im­age of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the party is on the rise and that it would per­form ex­cep­tion­ally well in the elec­tions, lo­cal is­sues, ten­sions and lead­er­ship notwith­stand­ing. Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst and thinker Dr Ku­mar San­jay Singh ex­am­ines the dither­ing, in­ternecine vi­o­lence and de­ser­tions from the party soon af­ter the first phase of elec­tions.

HYPER­BOLE SEEMS TO HAVE SUB­STI­TUTED STRAT­EGY in BJP’S po­lit­i­cal think­ing, at least in east­ern and north­east­ern In­dia. Con­sider the stun­ning claims be­ing made by the top ech­e­lons of BJP’S lead­er­ship. Amit Shah, who is pro­jected as a mod­ern-day Chanakya -Kaultilya for the West, by his acolytes, did not only make an out­landish claim of win­ning over 200 seats in the Ben­gal state as­sem­bly elec­tion 2021 but also ex­horted party work­ers to re­peat the claim [ab ki baar do sau paar -this time around, let us cross 200 (seats) ] even in the face of pub­lic in­credulity.

While dis­cussing the ero­sion of the de­mar­ca­tion be­tween fan­ta­sia and re­al­ity, how can we ig­nore the stun­ning claim of the mav­er­ick Chief Min­is­ter of Tripura Bi­plab Ku­mar Deb? Be­ing no stranger to idio­syn­crasies, Bi­plabh Deb in a pub­lic meet­ing on 14 Feb­ru­ary 2021, claimed, “Amit Shah, who was then the BJP na­tional pres­i­dent, had told us that the party was plan­ning to ex­pand its foot­print and es­tab­lish its rule in Nepal and Sri Lanka dur­ing a close in­ter­ac­tion with sev­eral lead­ers at the state guest­house here ”

Notwith­stand­ing the mir­ror and smoke tricks that Amit Shah con­jures to mes­mer­ize the me­dia and the elec­torate, re­al­ity has a way of ex­pos­ing the true sar­to­r­ial sta­tus of the em­peror.

He fur­ther in­formed the jour­nal­ists of The East Mojo, “We were talk­ing in the state guest house when Ajay Jamwal [North-East Zonal Sec­re­tary of BJP] said that BJP has formed its gov­ern­ment in sev­eral states of In­dia. In re­ply, Shah said, ‘Now Sri Lanka and Nepal are left. We have to ex­pand the party in Sri Lanka, Nepal and win there to form a gov­ern­ment”. It may have been an amus­ing jibe, but re­flects the ex­pan­sion­ist fan­tasies of the leader.

It’s per­ti­nent to re­call here that the forth­com­ing as­sem­bly elec­tions in 2021 were a sig­nif­i­cant sub­ject mat­ter of Shri Bi­plab Deb where he is re­ported to have pro­claimed, “The peo­ple of West Ben­gal will bid good­bye to Ma­mata didi -sis­ter, as Modi and Shah have reached Ben­gal. The flip-flop of CPM and Con­gress in Ker­ala will be over this time be­cause BJP is all set to come to power there. The gov­ern­ment in Tamil Nadu would not have formed with­out BJP. The lo­tus will bloom across the coun­try.”

Do you want to know what is the con­di­tion of #BJP in #Ben­gal?

See

Here’s the video of clash be­tween BJP work­ers in Paschim Bard­haman’s Dur­ga­pur ahead of #DilipGhosh event.

In­ter­est­ingly this hap­pened hours af­ter Union Home Min­is­ter #Amit­Shah left Ben­gal#Amit­ShahIn­Ben­gal pic.twit­ter.com/​iFQasH­PYv8

— Bhar­tendu Sharma (@Bhar­tendulkar) De­cem­ber 21, 2020

To un­der­stand this re­course to hy­per­bole one has to take into ac­count the an­tic­i­pated loss of par­lia­men­tary seats ow­ing to the peas­ant dis­quiet against the farm laws. Even the most san­guine BJP par­ti­san grudg­ingly ad­mits to the demise of the party or­ga­ni­za­tional struc­ture in Pun­jab, Haryana, West­ern UP and in North Ra­jasthan.

Be­ing a party that mea­sures its suc­cess pri­mar­ily in terms of elec­toral vic­tory, re­coup­ing the an­tic­i­pated loss of par­lia­men­tary seats in the afore­men­tioned re­gions has be­come an ob­ses­sion of the Modi-Shah led BJP. Hence the des­per­ate tac­tics and the out­landish claims be­com­ing a fea­ture of this edi­tion of as­sem­bly elec­tions.

Notwith­stand­ing the mir­ror and smoke tricks that Amit Shah con­jures to mes­mer­ize the me­dia and the elec­torate, re­al­ity has a way of ex­pos­ing the true sar­to­r­ial sta­tus of the em­peror.

Ev­i­dently, al­l’s not well with the world’s largest party or as Mar­cel­lus would have ex­claimed, “Some­thing is rot­ten in the state of Den­mark. “

Re­ports from state-based news­pa­pers un­der­score that BJP seems to be im­plod­ing un­der the weight of its in­ter­nal con­tra­dic­tions in West Ben­gal and North­east­ern states of In­dia. Open con­flicts be­tween the old and the ‘new’ BJP (read de­fec­tors from ri­val par­ties) in Ben­gal has been cov­ered even by the print and vi­sual me­dia of North In­dia.

There is, how­ever, con­sid­er­able fer­ment within the or­ga­ni­za­tion even in As­sam and Tripura. In As­sam, since mid-March 25 lead­ers have been ex­pelled from the party for field­ing their can­di­da­ture against the of­fi­cial party nom­i­nee. Seven of those ex­pelled were lead­ers who con­tested polls in the first phase of As­sam as­sem­bly elec­tions.

With 7 more BJP lead­ers hav­ing been ex­pelled from the party yes­ter­day, 15 of them in­clud­ing for­mer deputy Speaker of As­sam As­sem­bly Dilip Ku­mar Paul ex­pelled ear­lier and MLA Shi­la­ditya Dev re­sign­ing from the party, all is def­i­nitely not hunky-dory in As­sam.

In Tripura too, 11 party lead­ers were ex­pelled for con­test­ing as in­de­pen­dent can­di­dates in April 6-sched­uled Tripura Au­tonomous Dis­trict Coun­cil elec­tions.

There is a fur­ther sting in the tail that will give BJP strate­gists sleep­less nights. It’s of im­mense po­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance to note that the ero­sion of the or­ga­ni­za­tional struc­ture is most pro­nounced in states that have a very strong tra­di­tion of re­gional pol­i­tics.

Ev­i­dently, al­l’s not well with the world’s largest party or as Mar­cel­lus would have ex­claimed, “Some­thing is rot­ten in the state of Den­mark. ” There is a fur­ther sting in the tail that will give BJP strate­gists sleep­less nights. It’s of im­mense po­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance to note that the ero­sion of the or­ga­ni­za­tional struc­ture is most pro­nounced in states that have a very strong tra­di­tion of re­gional pol­i­tics.

Ad­mit­tedly it is too early to pre­dict whether this rise of re­gional cur­rent in pol­i­tics will halt the BJP jug­ger­naut, nev­er­the­less, it is im­por­tant to prog­nose that BJP’S rise as the largest po­lit­i­cal force lay in its abil­ity to ex­pand be­yond its tra­di­tional base of Hindi heart­land into ar­eas that were erst­while strong­holds of re­gional pol­i­tics. It’s also im­por­tant to re­call that the splin­ter­ing of INC into re­gional po­lit­i­cal for­ma­tions was in a large mea­sure re­spon­si­ble for its de­clin­ing po­lit­i­cal clout.