After the BJP National Executive meet concluded on Tuesday, an impish politician remarked on the uncanny similarities between the UPA presidential hopeful Pratibha Patil and the BJP’s very own Rajnath Singh. Apart from kinship, they both seem blessed with fertile imaginations: Pratibha believes she is in communion with the spirits and Rajnath imagines an unending conspiracy to deprive him of his rajyog. Both individuals, the politician concluded, have confirmed that the Peter Principle doesn’t apply to Indian public life.

Ever since the discrepancy between promise and performance touched dizzying heights in the Uttar Pradesh assembly election, the BJP has gone into another tailspin. The debacle had two immediate consequences. First, it was a monumental setback to the party’s hopes of leading the NDA back to power in 2009. The immediate fallout was on the presidential election. The BJP’s loss of political momentum has prevented Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat from successfully encashing his cross-party IOUs. Secondly, the UP defeat, followed by the disappointment in Goa, punctured Rajnath Singh’s pretensions of being at the helm of the boisterous saffron march on Delhi. With its president’s leadership claim exposed as counterfeit, the rot in the BJP that had been glossed over in anticipation of a political recovery now resurfaced.

Rajnath’s reaction to adversity has been one of brazenness. He first decided that the defeat was “collective” and certainly not an indictment of his legendary greatness. Second, he decided that there was nothing to either discuss or explain. The initial political resolution for the National Executive session which also guardedly focused on some shortcomings in the party was peremptorily junked at the last minute and a predictable indictment of the UPA’s three years in power substituted for it. Finally, he complained to senior RSS leaders that all the disquiet stemmed from “rootless” intellectuals around the party who were allegedly acting at the behest of some “dissident” leaders. It is no secret that the party president’s office identified the three leading contrarians as Leader of Opposition L.K. Advani, General Secretary Arun Jaitley and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. It is also reliably understood that the wariness of Jaitley and Modi stems from astrological prognosis.

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