Silver lining: Here's why a Delhi poll loss may cheer up the Bihar BJP

New Delhi: In what seems like a failed gamble by Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah – the para-dropping of former IPS officer Kiran Bedi as its chief ministerial candidate for the 2015 Delhi assembly polls - BJP insiders in Bihar are rather relieved that they may not have to deal with a similar situation in the upcoming state elections in November.

Though there was outrage within the party cadre and among several senior BJP leaders over Shah’s decision to announce a non-party person as its CM candidate, ignoring local leaders, none spoke out. However, if exit polls are to be believed, the decision has backfired. The local leaders of Bihar are hopeful that this setback in Delhi would make the party’s supreme authority –Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo – more sensitive to the local leadership.

Even before the Delhi elections had concluded, the word had reached Bihar that if the experiment in the capital paid off, a similar strategy would be implemented in Bihar.

“The party had considered the repetition of the Delhi experiment in Bihar as the unit there is equally faction-ridden. Consequently, there were plans to have a new face in the state to bring results at least as good as that of the Lok Sabha elections,” a senior BJP leader said.

“However, since the Delhi experiment didn’t go our way, that aspect has to be reconsidered,” he added.

Local Bihar leaders have been apprehensive of an outsider being projected as their CM candidate for the assembly polls. In fact, according to a BJP leader from Bihar, the local cadre there was secretly hoping that Shah’s gamble in Delhi doesn’t pay off.

“Getting a fresh face to lead is always a good move to portray new hope in a state. But the BJP is an organisation-based party wherein over due course workers become leaders. But, getting an outsider and relying heavily on his popularity while undermining potential of the workers in the state could turn out of be disastrous,” a senior BJP leader said on condition of anonymity.

The leader added that even an accommodating cosmopolitan city like Delhi had refused to identify with the party decision to parachute an outsider to lead its campaign in the state elections. An attempt to repeat the same mistake in Bihar, where voters are mostly from small towns and villages and identify with known faces, could be disastrous for the party where the local cadre has been relentlessly working at the grassroots level.

Even the Delhi cadre of the party took to the streets in protest when Shah declared Bedi as its CM candidate. Bihar party leaders too are acknowledging the fact that the BJP cadre in Delhi is within its rights to feel cheated.

“Forget the cadre, even the parliamentary board of the party and prominent MPs in the state were not consulted before the decision was taken. This has never happened in the BJP where supremacy has overlooked the interest of the cadre,” the BJP leader said.

BJP activists in Delhi say that the cadre was less enthusiastic about the elections following the induction of Bedi. As a result, the effort that was put during the Lok Sabha elections by the local cadre wasn’t repeated in the assembly elections despite every parliamentarian being involved in the campaign.

Meanwhile, the move to prop up Bedi may have also alienated several senior party leaders and supporters as they perceive it as a reflection of the ruthlessness with which the BJP president is dictating terms in the party.