BJP offers ticket to get Kiran Bedi on board, counter AAP

The tweets from social activist Kiran Bedi praising the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi comes as a welcome endorsement for the party. After all it’s not often that an activist making her personal voting preference public sparks this kind of public response and spices up an already surcharged political atmosphere.

A series of tweets announcing that she favoured BJP and Narendra Modi last evening raised the obvious question – will Kiran Bedi join the BJP and contest elections on a party ticket? Presently there is nothing to confirm that she will. However, senior leaders from the BJP told Firstpost that if the former police officer were to decide on joining the party she would be given a warm welcome.

The welcome would include an open offer to contest the elections from any of the seven Delhi seats, but they would prefer her to contest from Chandini Chowk or New Delhi. Some senior BJP leaders are in touch with her on the matter.

Though in public debates and tweets she has taken an assertive pro-Modi position, no BJP leader could confirm the possibility of coming into the party fold.

“I enjoy my voice as an independent,” Bedi said, adding that she was not interested in joining any political party.

During the parliamentary elections in 2009, Bedi was offered a ticket by the BJP to contest from one of the two seats, but she had declined, preferring to be an activist than become a politician, a source in the party said. Following her tweet backing Modi, Subramanian Swamy openly invited her to join the party, saying, “We should invite Kiran Bedi and Gen VK Singh to join BJP”.

The issue evoked a response from Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh who said, “I would like to congratulate Kiran Bediji, and also add that it is not at all surprising that she was invited, but I think she should remove inclusive from her tweet if she supports Modi.”

Bedi’s tweet acquires significance since it came after the findings of a _Times of India_survey were made public, which suggested that AAP will dent the BJP vote share in urban areas and could play spoiler to Modi’s prospects. The activist is the first prominent personality to clearly voice her opinion in favour of the BJP since the report was published.

In one of her tweets she had also questioned the kind of leading questions that was put forward in the Times Of India survey. Though BJP leaders did not denounce the survey, some of them raised questions on the sample size and some apparent contradictions in that survey and the manner in which the questions were framed.

From the BJP’s perspective, Bedi was just as good a candidate for 2009 elections, but things are even more in her favour in 2014. Following the Anna Hazare Lokpal movement in the summer of 2011, Bedi became the other most recognisable faces of that movement and continues to be closely associated with the anti-corruption activist. Her public, and bitter, split with Arvind Kejriwal is another point in her favour and could be an effective voice of opposition, with impeccable credentials, against the rising buzz that surrounds the Aam Admi Party after the Delhi elections.

How the BJP views the latest entrants in the AAP

Despite a tremendous performance in four north Indian assembly elections, the BJP’s leaders and workers have been watching the media coverage of the AAP with exasperation and a degree of concern. A number of party leaders blame the party’s decision making structure and delay in naming Dr Harsh Vardhan as its chief ministerial candidate for the Aam Admi Party’s rise in Delhi.

But they concede that since the damage has already been done, it is better to learn from the experience and take corrective measures. The buzz around the Aam Admi Party has set alarm bells off in the party and forced them out of complacency that was otherwise slowly setting in among the leaders and workers ahead of the elections.

While the BJP’s activists aren’t commenting about it, they are analysing why big media organisations are giving so much space to AAP and believe there may be a bias in favour of the smaller party. However, they are hoping this will soon pass.

A section of BJP leaders are peeved over the hype that has been generated by personalities like Meera Sanyal (formerly with Royal Bank of Scotland), Capt Gopinath (of Air Deccan fame), Adarsh Shatri (formerly with Apple), Mallika Sarabhai (Gujarat-based dance activist) and V Balakrishnan (formerly with Infosys), joining the AAP.

The BJP’s leaders pointed out that Meera Sanyal and Capt Gopinath had contested the last parliamentary elections from the Mumbai South and Banglore South seats respectively but failed to make any impression on the electorate. Sarabhai, they said, along with other activists has been campaigning for some time now against Modi in Gujarat but could not affect the preferences of the voters.

Adarsh Shastri is the grandson of Lal Bahdur Shastri and son of Congress leader and CWC invitee Anil Shastri. He worked in the election management team of his father during the two elections, however he still lost.

However, this assessment of these professionals-turned-AAP politicians may not accurate. The elections of 2014 could be different from the elections these candidates fought in the past. There have been leaders who lost their deposits in their first elections and emerged victorious later on. But the buzz around them even before they could prove their credentials is certainly interesting.

The BJP is reviewing and fine tuning its youth strategy as this Firstpost story pointed out. The BJP youth wing president Anurag Thakur is working on making the party’s Campus Ambassador Program a success. Thakur claims over a thousand youths have registered online within 48 hours of its launch and than 11 thousand people have liked their Facebook page. The next phase of this program would start from 15 January.

Winds of change are blowing in Congress too. The party, which had been used to delaying its ticket distribution till the last minute, is now is gearing up to announce its candidates well in advance. This announcement was made after party core group meeting by none less than Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi. Gandhi said the selection of candidates will be made on the basis of credentials and will take into account the aspirations of people of each region.