Body Blows: Still Standing

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi returned from the BJP's national executive in Mumbai with a spring in his step. His position was safe, at least for a while. If the party's "tallest leader" Atal Behari Vajpayee had wanted his head, party president M. Venkaiah Naidu and others stood solidly behind him, talking instead to Modi's chief rival Keshubhai Patel to tone down the pitch of his campaign to remove the chief minister.

The change in the mood in Mumbai was palpable. Patel stayed away on the first day of the meeting, preferring to issue statements from Ahmedabad terming Modi's rule a "mini-Emergency" and the Gujarat BJP reeling under an atmosphere of fear. When the national executive ended two days later, Patel was seated next to Modi at one of the sessions, had met Naidu and L.K. Advani for a session and had become less belligerent. The same day, Modi called on Vajpayee and spent about half an hour in a one-to-one meeting. "Some issues were raised. Patel had certain views but we conveyed our views to him," said Naidu of the meeting. "There is no proposal to change the chief minister."

Vajpayee and Patel have in fact helped Modi, say BJP leaders. Even if there was a proposal to remove the Gujarat chief minister, open dissension motivated the party to close ranks behind Modi and give him a breather, if not a total reprieve. The issue is wide open even now. Patel has threatened to keep it alive in Gujarat, go to Delhi and seek another hearing of the top leadership. Also, party sources say that at this juncture when the party has chosen to strengthen its core ideological constituency—in other words, become more hardline—it is unlikely to discard the mascot of such a constituency. Far from becoming a pariah within his party, Modi has been petitioned to campaign in Maharashtra for the assembly elections in September. "We'll definitely have him. We see nothing wrong in that," says BJP leader Gopinath Munde.

In fact, the "Gujarat factor" and Modi were not even the subject of any official discussion in the BJP national executive. These issues were clearly settled before the meet even began on June 22. Then, what message did Patel, state BJP president Rajendrasinh Rana and other senior leaders take back to Gandhinagar? That the party top brass remains unimpressed by the number of dissident MLAs—nearly 100 of 128. They are not disturbed by the "mini-Emergency" in Gujarat. For now, all that senior BJP leaders want to see is discipline. Just how long—it's an enigmatic question for both Modi and Patel.