The surprise is not that Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel has resigned. The surprise is (a) she was, in the first place, hand-picked for the job by the outgoing Chief Minister Narendra Modi back in May 2014, and, (b) that she lasted as long as she did though she lacked leadership skills and failed to grow in the high office.
However, as they say, better late than never. It is now a mere formality for her resignation to be accepted which she put out on her Facebook page on Monday.
Clearly, she was asked to go. Given that her predecessor was one of the better chief ministers that Gujarat has had in several decades, who had complete control over the State administration and the party, Patel had a very tough act to follow.
Despite Modi’s implicit support, she did not have it in her to get a grip on the party and the Government. Unanchored, both suffered from a lack of central control, while Patel herself got embroiled in controversies. Surprisingly, there were reports about her own family members exploiting her position for pecuniary gains, though the Opposition failed to offer any substantive charge of wrong-doing.
But what seemed to have finally sealed her fate was the recent attack in Una district on Dalits by a group of upper-caste, self-appointed cow protectors. Such was their audacity that after lashing the poor fellows on their naked backs, they posted the video on popular social media, as if they had achieved a great feat of courage and valour.
The gruesome act seen on video shocked the nation. A number of Opposition leaders rushed to Una to offer sympathies and support to the victims. The matter was politicised by the Opposition which used the incident to paint the entire ruling party as anti-Dalit. A number of such minor and not-so-minor incidents from several parts of the country caused the Modi Government a lot of embarrassment.
The Opposition parties latched on to every such incident in order to suggest as if a systematic offensive had been launched by the party in power to attack the Dalits. Of course, there was no truth in the canard, but the BJP was guilty of risking trouble by not speaking up firmly when first of the series of such incidents came to light. Opportunistic and mischievous elements came to exploit the situation.
Some did so with the ulterior motive of helping the anti-BJP parties. But the failure of the BJP leadership to distance itself from the attackers was a matter of concern. Though the RSS-BJP are committed to fight casteism, such incidents allowed the Opposition to paint the ruling party anti-Dalit.
With the UP election due early next year, the BJP leadership was forced on the back foot. The trigger certainly was the assault on Dalits in Una in Gujarat. Again, she failed to anticipate and contain the anti-reservation protests by the Patel youths. The handling of the protests left much to be desired.
Given that the Assembly elections in Gujarat are due later in 2017, the BJP under Patel feared a huge setback. Her resignation nearly a year-and-a-half before the next Assembly poll would provide enough time to her successor to settle down and establish his grip on the administration and the party. It was public knowledge that she and the BJP President Amit Shah were not on the best of terms.
Her failure to deliver both on political and governance fronts, however, emboldened her detractors who sought her removal to arrest the sharp decline in the party’s fortunes in the State. In the municipal and panchayat elections under her watch, the BJP lost much ground. Though the party was still ahead of the Congress in the municipal corporations that went to polls last year, in small towns and kasbas BJP suffered reverses.
In the panchayat elections too it managed to win only four out of 31 districts last year. In the district panchayat elections held this year, Congress won 23 while BJP won only eight. Though the Congress in Gujarat continues to suffer from lack of a charismatic leader, its most influential leaders like Shansinh Vaghela being former BJP veterans, the resignation of Patel gives the BJP an opportunity to re-establish its connect with the voters. The party under Modi had seemed invincible but that was more due to his personal appeal.
Without a strong and inspiring leader to replace Patel as chief minister, there could well be a question mark over the performance of the BJP in the next Assembly poll.
