Rajnath re-elected BJP prez

NEW DELHI: Mr Rajnath Singh was on Sunday re-elected as BJP president, this time for a full three-year term. It means that he’ll have to steer the party through assembly elections in as many as 19 states and a union territory (Delhi) and, more importantly, the next round of general election, to be held by May, 2009, before his tenure runs its course.

Mr Singh found himself pitchforked as BJP president on January 2 this year after his predecessor Mr L K Advani was forced to step down from his post in the wake of his skirmish with the rest of his party, and the Sangh parivar, over his remarks eulogising Jinnah. His remarks on a couple of occasions (such as his advocacy of a war with Pakistan and snapping-off of diplomatic ties with Pakistan) was out of sync with the general mood.

While a year’s stint at the top may be too short a term to assess any person’s leadership skills, Mr Singh’s reflexes were found to be wanting during the first real crisis that hit the party after he took over as the BJP president — the collapse of the Arjun Munda government in Jharkhand.

The saffron outfit continues to wade through choppy waters in the politically-crucial state of Uttar Pradesh. The impressive show put up by the party in the civic elections concluded earlier this month had more to do with the quota and appeasement politics of its rivals as well as the absence of the BSP from the electoral arena. The party leadership has still to finalise its recovery roadmap in the state to which their president belongs.

To be fair to Mr Singh, he has succeeded in establishing a synergy between the BJP and the rest of the Sangh parivar. He has managed to inject a semblance of order and discipline, and is in the process of re-claiming the party’s ideological base. He has struggled to come out of the shadows of the Atal-Advani duo, which has shepherded the party since its inception in 1980.