New York: The appointment of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as chairman of campaign committee of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will ensure the victory of NDA in the 2014 General Elections ushering in a new era, Janata Party President Subramanian Swamy has said.

He said the choice was a happy development for the nation and was welcomed by all sections of the community in India and abroad.

"Modi is an experienced politician and had conducted three elections in Gujarat state winning all of them. He has an unblemished track record in Indian politics and has proved to be an able administrator," Swamy said on the sidelines of a function in Long Island near here.

The decision has sent shock waves in the Congress camp and its senior leaders are spending sleepless nights as Modi could ensure a clean sweep for BJP in the ensuing elections, he said.

One impact of the Gujarat Chief Minister’s elevation as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s election campaign committee chief will be the quiet retreat of the Amethi MP as his main challenger; the Congress president will be forced to lead the electoral battle in 2014 and search for a new surrogate-PM should the party be in position to head a new coalition Government.

Rahul Gandhi’s obvious reluctance (read inability) to take on Narendra Modi in the race to Delhi puts Congress at a clear disadvantage vis-à-vis the BJP. This is why, despite the near certainty that the party is heading for a rout in 2014, Sonia Gandhi must desperately find a surrogate with whom Rahul Gandhi can establish a dyarchy should opportunity invite Congress to lead a third coalition.

With the road thus clear for Narendra Modi’s ultimate projection as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate in 2014, a brief analysis of this spectacular development would be in order. Narendra Modi is independent India’s first Chief Minister to be projected by his own party as a future Prime Minister. While former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh did become Prime Minister, he had to break away from the Congress and form the National Front coalition to do so. Similarly, former Karnataka Chief Minister HD Deve Gowda was selected to be Prime Minister in 1996 when some non-Congress non-BJP parties joined hands to form the United Front government after the Congress headed by PV Narasimha Rao lost the elections.

Modi’s elevation follows grim opposition from stalwart LK Advani who, like the blind king Dhritarashtra, refused to give up the throne he regarded as rightfully his, even after his beloved son(s) had come of age. Ironically the decision, forced by the chief ministers, cadres, and vocal public opinion, marks a decline in RSS domination of BJP affairs, something Advani forcefully advocated at the Chennai national executive meeting in September 2005, when he repudiated the ‘umbilical cord’ between the two organisations and spoke of a ‘symbiotic relationship’. He also rebuked the RSS for day to day meddling in the party’s affairs, warning that this would ‘do no good either to the party or to the RSS.”

The pigeons have now come home to roost. This statement warrants a brief explanation. It is no secret that the RSS set up the Jana Sangh as its political arm, a slot later taken by the BJP. Hence its domination of the party, which often worked to the detriment of ambitious leaders who tried to challenge RSS favourites. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya famously told one stalwart to move out of the BJP if he could not get along with Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Advani similarly was deeply entrenched in the Parivar set up, which rendered challengers like Murli Manohar Joshi infructuous.

So well supported was Advani by the Parivar stalwarts that the then Sarsanghachalak KS Sudarshan was forced to retract his statement that Vajpayee and Advani should retire from politics after the 2004 defeat. Even after Advani’s startling praise of Mohammad Ali Jinnah while in Pakistan in June 2005, RSS had a tough time getting him to step down as party president. He was replaced by Nitin Gadkari, a provincial who failed to make a mark in Delhi, but continued to manipulate the levers of power, imposing himself as the party’s Prime Ministerial hopeful in the 2008 election, and refusing to call it a day even after being soundly rejected by the electorate.

What makes Goa 2013 different is the opposition to the sustained mismanagement of the party by the central leadership in Delhi, and this includes the RSS. After the Rajasthan election was narrowly lost in 2008, Haryana surrendered in 2009, and the recent trashing in Karnataka after the humiliation and forced exit of BS Yeddyurappa, the State unit leaders (Chief Ministers and potential Chief Ministers) clearly felt that enough was enough and that BJP could not be left to the whims of non-vote-catchers.

These grassroots leaders clearly decided to call the shots and together with Rajnath Singh – who was never allowed to settle down in his first tenure, and never made a wrong move in his second innings – called Advani’s bluff. When he gracelessly refused to read the writing on the wall and bless the rising star in Goa, he was allowed to write himself into oblivion.

Rajnath Singh had indicated the way the wind would blow when he spontaneously invited Modi back into the parliamentary board. Among State leaders, Vasundhara Raje was first to make her preference clear during her recent yatras, and Manohar Parrikar was explicit that Modi could attract the floating vote that often decides the fate of an election.

Regarding Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh, it needs to be said that like Raman Singh, he is an honest and excellent leader with the capacity to win his State again and again. It is no slur on their abilities, however, to say that they lack the cross-State appeal of Modi and both have wisely recognised this.

It bears recalling that the assertion by some politicians and media persons thatthe BJP rose from two seats in 1984 (post Indira Gandhi’s assassination) and captured power at the Centre in less than two decades because of the leadership of Vajpayee and Advani is simply incorrect. Both men were fully backed by the RSS and owed their power to that association. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement was an RSS movement, and was first mooted at Palampur when Murli Manohar Joshi was party president. BJP used it to rise to national eminence, and then arrive in Delhi.

It bears recalling that an Advani crony who loves to describe himself as an RSS ideologue wrote a column in a daily newspaper on the tenth anniversary of the Babri demolition stating that the Ram Mandir movement was only a stratagem to garner public support and votes for the BJP, and there was never any intention to build the temple. This led Sushma Swaraj to call Rama Janmabhoomi an ‘encashed cheque’. After not protesting all these years, VHP cannot now make this its priority number one. It reeks of dishonesty and must stop.

Now that Narendra Modi has been anointed as the BJP’s primus inter pares, he should not be made to waste his energies in futile obstacle races. The task ahead is formidable enough.

Footnote: Unable to digest the rise and rise of Narendra Modi, Advani has peevishly resigned from all party posts, viz, national executive, parliamentary board, and election committee. Rajnath Singh has rejected the resignations, but it is fairly certain that the octogenarian will no longer attend party meetings, so they may well let him go.

Advani has not resigned his Lok Sabha seat from Gandhinagar, won courtesy Narendra Modi  in 2008, a mistake for which the Gujarat Chief Minister has paid dearly in subsequent years.

The impact of his tantrums on public opinion will be less than minimal. Those who doubt this assessment may recall that Advani was almost trounced by Rajesh Khanna in New Delhi in 1991, and had since relied onNarendra Modi to get elected from Gandhinagar. After the souring of relations between the two, he began searching for a safe seat outside Gujarat for 2014. He reportedly honed in on Bhopal, and hence his praise for Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

In other words, a man who needs a State stalwart to win his own Parliamentary seat is not much of a vote-catcher anyway.