Nitin Gadkari was the second BJP President facing such charges of corruption. The first one was Bangaru Laxman, who was ousted from the post within 24 hours after the disclosure that he had accepted Rs One Lakh from some self styled defense brokers. Mr. Gadkari did not face the fate of Mr. Bangaru, because he had solid support of RSS leaders, who wanted his continuation at that post at any cost. BJP was facing elections in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat and party men were afraid of the repercussions of having a tainted President at the helm. But, still Gadkari remained unmoved, because RSS did not want him to leave. Leaders like Advani could not prevail upon him to resign. Advani could not match the power of RSS, which was hell bent to support its nominee Nitin Gadkari even after the charges of corruption against him. Gadkari backed by RSS was so resolute to continue at the post that he even suspended Ram Jethmalani for asking him to quit. RSS leaders did not spare even Narendra Modi, who was facing Gujarat Assembly Elections. One of the RSS leaders MS Vaidya even blamed Mr. Modi for media revelations relating Purty company and tried to sabotage the chance of BJP in Gujarat elections only to save Mr. Gadkari.

Anyway, BJP won in Gujarat and Gadkari had to resign from BJP and abandon his ambition to lead the party again in continuation. After the election of Rajnath Singh, he gave a short speech, in which he dealt with the problems facing the country. Interestingly, he did not mention corruption as one of the issues before the country.

It is good for BJP that Gadkari is not its President. Today corruption has emerged as the main political issue of the country. It is true that during elections, this issue takes a back seat, because almost all serious contenders of power seem to be the same on the corruption plank and the voters do not have choice. In spite of this fact, showing a non corrupt face, if one has it, is always beneficial in the changed political scenario of the country. With Nitin Gadkari as its President, BJP would have lost its moral right even to talk against corruption and it would have been difficult to energise its cadres during elections. Before 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Assembly elections of at least 10 states will take place. Out of them BJP has stakes in Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Karnataka. In all these states it is pitted against Congress. Gadkari’s leadership would have been burden on the party.

Unfortunately for BJP, RSS leaders were not ready to accept the political reality that Gadkari might spoil chances of BJP victory in states. Even if RSS leaders were aware of the reality, they wanted to have Gadkari in BJP whether the party fares worse or better in the hustings. For them the control over party was more important than the party’s performance in elections.

But RSS could not bulldoze BJP to accept its nominee, because of the stiff resistance created by some of the BJP leaders. These leaders were resolute in their determination not to give a walk over to Gadkari and RSS. Mahesh Jethmalani was chosen to give a nominal fight to Gadkari. It was found that he was not eligible for contesting the election. Then Yashwant Sinha came forward to challenge Gadkari. The fight of Mahesh Jethmalani could have been just nominal fight, but that could not be true for in case of a fight given by Mr. Sinha, who commands a high political stature. He did not have an RSS background. He just needed the open support of LK Advani, which seemed to be likely. That was enough to give a good fight to Gadkari.

It is obvious that RSS made last minute efforts to prevail upon Advani to accept Gadkari as the Party President for the second time, but he was unmoved. RSS leaders could sense the danger posed by a fight for the President post between his nominee Nitin Gadkari and Yashwant Sinha, who was never a Swayam Sevak in the past. There was a prospect of hard hitting campaign by Yashwant Sinha. There were possibilities of other leaders like Jethmalani using the harshest possible words for Gadkari and media highlighting the corruption charges against him. The worst, the election was to be taken place by secret ballot all over the country. Any BJP leader with common political sense is aware that Gadkari was not the right person to lead the party, when one election after another would take place in the country. Because of his taints, Gadkari could not campaign in Gujarat elections. He even could not campaign in Himachal Pradesh in the last leg of campaigning because of his taints. How could he be expected to lead the campaign in other states?

This political reality would have favored Yashwant Sinha in the battle of ballots and even he could have defeated Gadkari in the election. This prospect frightened RSS bigwigs and they were forced to change his choice from Gadkari to Rajnath Singh. It should be mentioned that even Rajnath Singh was the choice of RSS after the fall of Advani over his famous Jinnah remark in Pakistan. As President, Rajnath Singh was acceptable to all in the changed circumstances.

Gadkari episode has shown that even the choice of RSS can be challenged, if the choice is wrong. RSS may want a person of his choice to lead the Union government, if BJP leads it after 2014. It may not be a cake walk for the RSS to have its say for doing that. This is the lesson of the latest developments in BJP over President’s election. (IPA Service)