Rama Krishna Sangem
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pushing a big social change within the BJP. He is keen on promoting OBCs and women in the distribution of tickets for the coming Lok Sabha elections. This way, he is gradually removing the established old guards and well entrenched political families in the party, not only now, right from the days of Jan Sangh. In their place, a new generation of SC/STs, OBCs and women will take leadership position.
This is event from February 28-29 BJP parliamentary meeting held at his residence in New Delhi. Sources who have some knowledge about this change say, the PM has not just sat through the entire meeting from 10.45 pm to 4 am, but also actively participated in the deliberations. Usually, former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee never showed this much of interest in the party tickets distribution meetings.
Vajpayee used to tell party leaders – LK Advani or some other senior leaders – about his preference for a few seats and leave the rest of seats to the choice of others. But, Advani used to call the shots, while former party presidents or general secretaries of respective states too had their share of candidates in the final lists. When Pramod Mahajan was the party general secretary, most of MP candidates from Maharashtra were of his choice.
This is not the case with Narendra Modi. He thoroughly goes through the reports of party panels about the probables of candidates and gets inputs from different sources and participates in the discussions too. Of course, Home Minister Amit Shah provides him with inputs from his own sources. Both Modi and Shah are not depending Central Intelligence wing reports for political decisions.
More OBCs this time
BJP has now 85 OBC MPs out of its total 303 in Lok Sabha. This time, this may go up, even slightly, due to big push from PM Modi. Even in the Union Council of Ministers, there are about 27 OBC ministers. This is the first time OBC have got this big representation in the central government. Being an OBC, the PM wants to increase their share in the minister in this third term.
Women are another focus area of Modi. As BJP has passed Women Reservations Act 2023, he wants to increase their share in the tickets too this time. But, he is aware of the limit s of their winning chances. So, he may prefer women from upper castes for these seats. Naturally, upper castes women have more chances of winning, compared to those of SC/ST and OBC categories.
The easing out of Vasundhara Raje from Rajasthan CM post and installing new faces Vishnu Deo Sai in Chhattisgarh and Mohan Yadav in Madhya Pradesh is sample of Modi’s new direction of social dynamics in BJP. This is reflected in taking two sitting BRS MPs into BJP. Both P Ramulu from Nagar Kuarnool (SC) and BB Patil from Zaheerabad are from this social strata. Patil belongs to powerful Lingayat OBC community.
