Smriti Irani in Rahul Gandhi’s new den Wayanad: What to make of it

During the 2019 elections, Smriti Irani defeated Rahul Gandhi, the heir apparent of the Indian National Congress, in his family bastion of Amethi. Amethi, a constituency hand-picked by Indira Gandhi back in the 1970s for Rahul Gandhi’s uncle Sanjay Gandhi, was ruled over multiple times by Rahul Gandhi’s father Rajiv Gandhi, his mother Sonia Gandhi and him.

In the 2019 elections, however, Rahul Gandhi decided to additionally contest from Wayanad, a constituency in the southern state of Kerala. While the Congress maintained that this was to reinvigorate the party cadre in both north (through his representation of Amethi) and south (through his candidacy in Wayanad), in terms of perception, it was widely felt that Rahul Gandhi’s decision was out of fear that he may not be able to win in Amethi.

He didn’t. Smriti Irani won Amethi in 2019.

Late last week, another interesting development took place.

Irani tweeted that she was looking forward to being in Wayanad on 3 May 2022. This started a flurry of reactions, predominantly whether she was going to challenge Rahul Gandhi in Wayanad.

At the outset, it seems highly inconceivable that the BJP would have her mount a direct challenge to Rahul Gandhi in Wayanad. Her turf is now Amethi and to leave it after only one term, no matter how tantalising the prospect of another Smriti vs Rahul battle, cannot conceivably be the BJP’s game plan.

To begin with, Hindus, traditionally voting for the BJP, are in the minority in Wayanad constituency. Back in 2019, when Wayanad was picked for Rahul Gandhi, PM Modi had remarked that Gandhi used a microscope to find a safe feat where the “majority is in minority”.

Indeed, BJP’s vote share in Kerala did increase from 10.45 per cent in 2014 to 12.93 per cent in 2019. In some constituencies, the BJP won a sizeable number of votes. For example, in Thiruvananthapuram, which elected Shashi Tharoor, the BJP candidate finished second, garnering over 3,15,000 votes. The difference between the votes he got and Tharoor won was 1,00,000. Coincidentally, this was the vote difference in Amethi in 2014 when Rahul Gandhi had won against Smriti Irani.

In Thrissur, actor Suresh Gopi finished third, but won close to 3,00,000 votes. Gopi contested in the 2021 Kerala Assembly elections as well. Finishing third in those elections as well, he nonetheless got 31.3 per cent of the votes, while the winning candidate won 34.25 per cent of the votes. Similar was the pattern in Pathanamthitta in the 2019 elections.

It’s quite likely that, come 2024, in a few more seats, the BJP could cross over the winning line with active support from the party’s star campaigners.

Wayanad, however, is a tall task. In the 2019 elections, Rahul Gandhi won a mammoth 7,06,367 votes whereas the CPI candidate, who finished second, could win only 2,74,597 votes. The BJP did not directly contest in Wayanad, but a candidate belonging to a party it had an alliance with could only win 78,590 votes.

Moreover, in the 2021 Assembly elections, the BJP’s performance in all seven Assembly constituencies falling within the parliamentary constituency of Wayanad was nothing remarkable. It finished a distant third in all seven of them, with its vote share in three of them ending up less than five percent.

In that context, Irani’s visit to Wayanad is the BJP’s attempt to start its pitch in Kerala with a bang. It seems to be an announcement by this ‘new BJP’ that it will send one of its most popular campaigners directly in the lion’s den to kickstart a challenge, no matter how unconquerable.

Her visit seems aimed primarily at enthusing the local BJP cadre into putting all its might for the next two years. Even if Wayanad isn’t winnable in 2024, with a formidable candidate in place and the backing of the top stars of the BJP, Wayanad could be nurtured to eventually ensure that a lotus blooms in that seat.

Indeed, Irani’s own campaign in Amethi serves as a ready illustration. Her party seems to have bestowed upon her another opportunity — to spearhead BJP’s ascension in Wayanad.

The day she won Amethi, she tweeted the first line of a Hindi couplet which translates to ‘who says the sky cannot be pierced?’. What she left unwritten in that tweet was the second line of the couplet — ‘try throwing a stone at it with conviction, my friends’.

She picked up the stone and pierced the Amethi skies. Her visit to Wayanad will enable the Wayanad and Kerala BJP team to benefit from a deeper understanding of how she did it.

In the 2021 Cabinet reshuffle, when the textiles ministry no longer remained with Irani after she had presided over it for five years, it was remarked that she had lost favour with the top BJP brass and that her political fortunes had started dwindling.

What was entirely missed in the prevalent commentary was that, while she was divested of one ministerial role, she was elevated to the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, also referred to as the ‘super cabinet’ due to its sheer power.

That elevation, it is becoming increasingly clear, wasn’t just to compensate for what she was divested of. Irani has over and over again earned the tag of demonstrating the tenacity to pick fights not many would want to pick.

Back in December 2020, Irani had mounted a challenge in Amethi that, come 2024, Rae Bareli, too, shall be gone out of Congress’ hands. Rae Bareli is the one lone Nehru-Gandhi family bastion which has continued to elect Sonia Gandhi despite Modi waves in 2014 and 2019.

The audacity she demonstrated in Amethi between 2014 and 2019 and the audacity she demonstrated in 2020 when she declared Rae Bareli an open contest is the same audacity the BJP hopes she will put on display for her party to sound the bugle in Kerala.

The period leading up to 2024 just got interesting.

The author is a lawyer and author of the book ‘The Smriti Irani Story: Why She Won Amethi’. Views expressed are personal.

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