Modi vs Rajnath: Are there serious faultlines in the BJP govt?

When it emerged that Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had been reduced to a rubber stamp in the process of selection of senior bureaucrats, it was only occasion to wonder again if Prime Minister Narendra Modi, widely perceived as a highly individualistic leader, was making minions of his ministers . After all, the man who was seen for some time as the possible Plan B of the NDA if it failed to mop up the numbers for a majority government and if potential allies refused to accept Modi’s leadership was now facing acute embarrassment in Parliament where the Opposition was indulging in a sneer campaign. [caption id=“attachment_1532437” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Rajnath Singh and Narendra Modi. Reuters[/caption] Writing for the editorial page of The Times of India, Aditya Sinha writes today that the PMO statement rubbishing allegations of impropriety against Rajnath’s son Pankaj should fool nobody. “It’s a personality clash between two ambitious politicians which began in the early days of the NDA-II government,” he writes, going on to argue that it has been Minister of State Kiren Rijiju who has Modi’s ear, travels extensively around the country and takes on the Parliamentary responsibility of fielding serious questions addressed to the Home Ministry. Rajnath, on the other hand, ended up cutting a sorry figure by attempting to do a Vajpayee in calling for insaniyat in dealing with the Kashmir question only to be silenced by Modi the very next day with some hard talk on Pakistan. “Rajnath is ambitious and according to those close to him, he wants to make his mark with something substantial. Modi’s suffocatingly tight grip on government makes that unlikely. Recent cooing aside, the chasm between the two looks only to grow,” Sinha writes. As Firstpost has written earlier , that Rajnath had to go public with his anguish over the rumours regarding his son being given a dressing down by the prime minister made it instantly apparent that all was not well in the top echelons of the BJP and the government. During a televised panel discussion on the subject, senior journalist Nalini Singh said: “This is the third story in four weeks on Rajnath Singh. So Modi will have to see who the conspirator is – an insider or an outsider?” Even assuming that the Modi-Rajnath rivalry tale is still to be buttressed – it was Rajnath, after all, as president of the BJP, who supported Modi’s candidature for the PM’s post – there is certainly cause to watch closely whether the PM goes on to undermine his home minister some more.