Vanzara letter: Modi was expecting engineered scandals

It was at the BJP-RSS coordination committee meeting last month in Delhi that  Narendra Modi expressed an apprehension that surprised those gathered. “When you decide to make me the Prime Ministerial candidate, certain things engineered by our rivals may surface that might unnerve you," Modi said. According to a senior BJP leader present at the meeting, Modi then advised that the party should not be disturbed by such developments.

Clearly, the fact that his detractors would be looking for anything to pull him down a peg or two was weighing heavily on the Gujarat chief minister’s mind.

A month down the line, the explosive contents of suspended IPS officer DG Vanzara’s letter has made Modi sound prophetic. Either that, or he had specific information that something of this sort was in the offing and he found himself in a place hwere there was little he could do to prevent it from happening.

That gives the indication that there could be more such episodes in the run-up to the next parliamentary elections. Both, within and outside of the BJP, many believe that there could be more such events in store.

The Congress has found the contents of Vanzara’s 10 page resignation letter to be the most potent ammunition to fight Modi. The Gujarat Congress is trying to make a huge issue out of it, even seeking public support for a statewide bandh that the party has now called on Sept 6, Friday.

Incidentally, this is the first bandh call by the Congress in Gujarat since 2004, nine years ago. The Congress is hoping that the Vanzara letter bomb will help the party mobilize momentum against Modi, within and outside of Gujarat, that he could not be the real challenger to the UPA regime.

To add power to Vanzara’s punch, the Congress is also relying on CDs of a sting operation, footage of which was released in Delhi early this week. The CDs show two BJP MPs apparently discussing a blank affidavit by the mother of another encounter victim, Tulsi Prajapati. Another CD purportedly shows leaders alleging that the Gujarat government had provided a “safe passage” to the “chief conspirator” in Haren Pandya’s murder. The Congress has demanded that Modi should resign and President’s rule be imposed in the state. Some NGOs in a long standing conflict with Modi have also joined the issue.

The BJP is claiming that Vanzara’s letter is the result of Congress’s manipulative politics including the misuse of the CBI and is responding in matching rhetoric but privately a number of leaders find the contents to be damaging, at least for the present.

Senior BJP leaders including party president Rajnath Singh are of the opinion that it is politically motivated and will accordingly be tackled. This will have no bearing on the BJP and RSS’s decision making process, of declaring Modi as Prime Ministerial candidate, as and when that happens.

Some other leaders’ worry is that while Modi has weathered enough rough situations to sail out of this one, there could be legal implications. The script of how things unfold over the next few days could be interesting – whether the CBI uses the contents of the letter as some kind of evidence and fresh information or if some NGO or individual seeks judicial intervention. How far such legal implications could impact Modi and his trusted aide Amit Shah is the real question.

After all, so far nothing has legally linked Modi to 2002 or to the alleged encounter killings.

Take some of things that Vanzara said in his letter “I have a moral justification to expose real culprits behind encounter cases …Men of the crime branch, ATS and border range during the period 2002-07 simply acted and performed their duties in compliance of the conscious policy of this government…. By this reasoning I am of the firm opinion that the place of this government instead of being in Gandhinagar should either be in Taloja central prison at Navi Mumbai or in Sabarmati central prison at Ahmedabad.”

One other section of BJP leaders believes that th e letter does not really require any attention. One party leader said, “If one is to believe what Vanzara is saying, then Modi is playing as a fair administrator, not doing anything to influence the due process of law.”

But beyond these arguments is also a fear factor – that the stakes for Modi are  so high this time that he cannot afford to look like a person who believes in the “use and throw” strategy with people who trust him with their career and their lives.

That’s a tricky situation for Modi strategists to handle.