Nobody can help BJP, if its central coterie chooses to commit political hara-kiri

New Delhi, May 18: So the BJP has once again become a victim of the political machinations of those very leaders who believe that elections are won and lost through creating right power equations in Delhi. It happened in Uttar Pradesh in the past and now it has been repeated in Karnataka. History has been witness to the fact that a party that does not respect the contributions of its main architect, who built the party brick by brick in the state, is doomed to be condemned by the voters. This is not to say that if that person is indulging in corrupt practices, then you should turn a blind eye towards his unlawful activities. But in a case, where you are aware of the fact that the constitutional functionaries are trying all the tricks in the book to defame and create problems for that person, then you have to be a little more understanding, instead of playing into the hands of his intra-party detractors, who are waiting in the wings to topple him. But BJP, which claims to be the party with a difference, has got the worst kind of coterie that is ruling the roost at the central level. The party committed political hara-kiri first in Uttar Pradesh and then in Karnataka. Let's discuss Karnataka first. B S Yeddyurappa was the person who made the party from scratch in the state. He emerged as the leader of Lingayats, the biggest community in terms of electoral influence in the state. The BJP reaped the harvest to the hilt and for the first time, and the party succeeded in forming a government in southern India for the first time. It was a dangerous signal for the Congress party as the BJP could spread its influence to other states of the region. As usual, the Congress party very cleverly used the office of the Governor to tarnish the image of Yeddyurappa and his image took a beating. Once your image takes a beating, every move of yours is looked at with suspicion and Yeddyurappa became a victim of negative public perception. But more than the Congress, Yedyurappa's own party members wanted to see the end of his innings as Karnataka CM. Everybody knows that Ananth Kumar , who is very close to L K Advani, was never happy with BS Yeddyurappa's ascendance to Karnataka's CM chair. Despite not possessing any mass base on his own, he always considered himself to be the right claimant to the CM's chair. And then the rest of damage was done by none other than Advani himself. With an eye on NDA's PM candidature for 2014 general elections, Advani started pushing for the removal of B S Yeddyurappa so that he could position himself as a true crusader against corruption. This deadly combination of Advani and Ananth Kumar did Yedyurappa in. More than the corruption cases lodged against Yeddyurappa, it was the internal backstabbing that queered the pitch for Yeddyurappa. According to some media reports, Ananth Kumar convinced the central leadership that Yeddyurappa's exit will have no impact on the Lingayat votes but the elections results have proved him wrong. Clearly, BJP has lost because of Yeddyurappa's exit and Ananth Kumar and Advani can't escape the blame for facilitating the demise of BJP's first govt down south. But why did the central leadership listen to Ananth Kumar, an arm chair politician, over Yeddyurappa, a mass base leader? The same thing had happened in Uttar Pradesh when Kalyan Singh, a mass base leader, was removed on the insistence of Lalji Tandon and Kalraj Mishra. Kalyan Singh had successfully devised a winning social engineering formula that provided for a backward caste leader leading a coalition of both forward and backward castes. With this combination, BJP used to sweep elections in UP in 1990s. Both Tandon and Mishra, bereft of any popular support, connived to throw Kalyan out because they had their own ambitions for CM post. Atal Behari Vajpayee listened to them as they were close to him and unfortunately he turned against Kalyan who had to finally resign. The party sacrificed a mass based leader because a few arm chair politicians convinced Vajpayee that there will be no impact on party's electoral health after Kalyan's ouster. And both of them were proved wrong. Today the party is nowhere in the race in UP and is vying with Congress for the third spot, after SP and BSP. Both Tandon and Mishra had played a crucial role in sealing a tie-up with BSP that paved the way for the decimation of the party in UP. So the story is very simple. Those who had no mass support presided over the decimation of BJP in two crucial states – Karnataka and UP. The party lost these two states just because it suited the vested interests of certain self-centred leaders. Even for the upcoming general elections in 2014, leaders who have no mass support are busy with political machinations. The entire rank and party favours Narendra Modi as the PM candidate but certain leaders , who can't compete with Modi electorally, are working out various permutations and combinations to stop him from taking the centrestage. If the party fails to make it again in 2014, then it will have its own arm chair leaders to blame and not the public or the opposition. Nobody can help a party that has made up its mind to move on a path of certain political hara-kiri.