There was a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party had a strong reserve bench. Led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, the 'party with a difference' had second-rung leaders at the Centre and a breed of experienced chief ministers at the state level who assured supporters that the BJP would never face a crisis once the top two departed.
But in a decade since the departure of Vajpayee, the perception has changed. Advani's failure to step into the shoes of the former PM and the massive anti-incumbency against the Congress-led second UPA government saw a supersonic rise of Narendra Modi, a former chief minister and a second-rung leader until recently, to the BJP's new-age leadership. And following his elevation, the 'difference' the party was once proud of seems to be waning.
Today's BJP has a weak local leadership
The upcoming seven-phase election in Uttar Pradesh is a point in hand. Despite being the party with high expectations in the state polls after its overwhelming performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the BJP has struggled to find a chief ministerial candidate there. On the other hand, all its three big rivals who were decimated in the same election have faces to lead them. For a party that once had readymade chief ministerial candidates making the job easier for the top brass, the current state of affairs is quite an anti-thesis.
The BJP announced a few months ago that it would not go for any CM candidate in UP. When asked about the departure from its general practice in the past elections, the saffron leadership defended that the party even had no faces in elections in states like Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand or Jammu & Kashmir but yet won.
It is true no doubt, but there is also a catch here. All these elections were held soon after the Lok Sabha election in 2014 and Modi's juggernaut was still rolling to bring them to the BJP's kitty (in J&K, as an ally to the PDP). Also, one has to keep in mind the key fact that the BJP finds it easier in states where it is pitted against the Congress.
The BJP also won Assam last year after projecting Sarbananda Sonowal as its face but one believes the ruling Congress, which was led by an aged leadership and facing a 15-year anti-incumbency in the state, was always on a sticky wicket. It would be no surprise if the BJP wins back Karnataka, the last big state ruled by the Congress, next year even without officially projecting BS Yeddyurappa as its CM face.
BJP's fight gets tough in states ruled by regional parties
But when it comes to states where regional parties are in control, the BJP's task gets tough. Since the victories of 2014, the BJP has lost in a series of elections held in non-Congress states, some of them very badly. In each of those battles, the saffron party applied the same formula of projecting Modi as the alternative to the local strongmen and it boomeranged.
Be it against Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi, Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad in Bihar, Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal or J Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, the 'Hail Modi' slogan didn't pay off in 2015-16. Kerala is one exception where a Congress-led dispensation lost in 2016 but not to the BJP. The reason is the prevalence of the Left in the state still and the BJP is in a serious struggle with the former to make a political space there (the BJP nevertheless opened its account in Kerala for the first time).
So, can BJP succeed in UP without a local face?
This brings us to the question: Can the BJP expect success in UP, which is also a non-Congress state? The year 2014 was a different ball-game. Elections in states are fought on different planks and what's required the most is a robust local face to capitalise on issues that seem electorally advantageous.
If the BJP aspires to win the throne at Lucknow (it hasn't tasted success in that state since 2002) by showcasing its national government's feats, it must have a local face to bridge the gap between New Delhi and the remote nooks and corners of UP — a big and complex state. It cannot really expect the PM himself doing the job of the missive and carrying out all the propaganda. In Bihar, another state politically akin to UP, the BJP failed just because it had no face matching the grip and appeal of Nitish Kumar and as an 'outsider', Modi completely misfired after having little grip over the ground reality.
BJP knows it but is helpless
But doesn't the BJP's politically sound top leadership know it? It surely does but it is helpless. Given the UP's complex socio-political character, selecting a CM candidate from a particular caste can seriously harm the BJP's prospects.
The BJP has traditionally been a party of the upper castes, which has mobilised majoritarian sentiments for electoral mileage. But the politics of UP today is not dominated by these two factors as it used to be. Modi has repeatedly stressed on the slogan of development and uplift of the backward sections (a process which was started by the Mandal politics) while the Ram Mandir issue has remained more rhetorical. This has made things difficult all the more for the BJP in choosing a face in the state.
BJP cannot do what Mayawati did
Unlike Mayawati, who succeeded in transforming caste polarisation in the state into a caste coalition in the past, the BJP has a serious problem in unifying the Brahmin-Thakur-OBC-Dalit bases, and choosing a CM candidate from any of these could hurt it. Especially, when every other party is trying to woo the Brahmins (13% of the electorate), the BJP, despite its upper-caste identity, has not been successful. In fact, it hardly has a credible Brahmin face since the departure of Vajpayee. Choosing a Thakur (9%) can upset the Brahmins, which is why the idea of making Union Home Minister and former UP chief minister Rajnath Singh as the CM face also did not fructify. The Dalits (21%), on the other hand, look set to return to Mayawati's fold after their flocking to the BJP in 2014. The BJP required a leader like Kalyan Singh to get its act together in UP but the man is too aged now to undertake the big project.
Lucknow cannot be won from New Delhi
The BJP is thus playing it safe in UP by preferring a collective show instead. Last year, besides picking Keshav Prasad Maurya, a leader belonging to the OBC, as its state president, the BJP leadership inducted a number of members from UP in the council of ministers representing different castes. Also, taking a lesson from what happened in Delhi two years ago when it went for outsider Kiran Bedi as the CM candidate and faced flak from other factions, the BJP has opted not to play with fire but bank on its universal face: Modi. But how much can the BJP do in UP by calling the shots from New Delhi?
