Who Is This Man?

Whispers From Camp Joshi

On BJP

• No one in the BJP top leadership is in awe of Narendra Modi’s style of functioning
• Modi as BJP candidate for prime ministership is a media creation; party will decide only in Oct-Nov 2013.
• Neither BJP nor its top leaders are in favour of Modi’s candidature; in fact, some may work to defeat him.

On Congress

• There is a secret understanding between Ahmed Patel (Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary) and Modi
• No state in India is being funded by the Centre like Gujarat, sometimes even at the cost of other states
• Congress wants Modi to be projected as PM candidate because it will consolidate minority votes for 2014

On Modi

• Modi’s megalomania has signs of Jayalalitha, Mamata Banerjee and Mayawati all rolled into one
• Modi’s style of functioning is similar to Mayawati’s; concentrate all power in your hands and use it.
• Modi won’t launch a regional party if his dreams are rebuffed because of Kalyan Singh’s experience

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Modi Vs Joshi

Who is Sanjay Joshi?
An RSS pracharak from Maharashtra. Known simply as ‘Sanjay bhai’ to saffronites, the low-profile Joshi is a trained mechanical engineer.

How did he end up in Gujarat?
Was “deputed” to the BJP there in 1988; he worked alongside Modi. Following a revolt by Shankersinh Vaghela in ’95, Keshubhai had to give way to Suresh Mehta as CM, Modi moved to Chandigarh.

Why did he fall out with Modi?
Joshi was close to Modi’s bete noire Keshubhai, whom Modi upstaged in 2001. He was also friends with Haren Pandya, the minister who was murdered after the 2002 riots.

Is he any match for Modi?
BJP's highest tally in the Gujarat assembly—121—was recorded under him as state general secretary; under Modi, it has been able to touch only 117. BJP also won 21 of the 26 Lok Sabha seats in 1997.

Why was he forced to resign from all party posts?*
In 2005, a sleaze CD allegedly featuring Joshi, a pracharak, was leaked to the media. The CD is said to have been doctored, but Camp Joshi has no doubt who was behind it.

Couldn’t Advani have helped?
As MP from Gandhinagar, Advani was at Modi’s mercy.

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He is media shy. He can easily get lost in a crowd. Even his name is familiar only because a sleaze CD in which he allegedly figured surfaced in 2005, prompting the BJP to banish him from public for the next six years. A self-effacing man, he gives no interviews and is almost an unknown entity in media circles in the national capital.

And yet, Sanjay Joshi is in the news. Gujarat’s formidable chief minister, Narendra Modi, skipped one BJP national executive meet last year and threatened to skip another last month, ostensibly because he felt that the party body could have either him or Joshi, not both. In the event, Modi did attend the Mumbai meet, but not before Joshi was asked to resign, pack up and return to New Delhi.

More drama was to follow. As Joshi prepared to board a train to Delhi, a frantic emissary from the party was dispatched to ensure he did not board the train. The buzz was Modi did not want him to travel in any train passing through Gujarat! He was persuaded to take a flight instead. Reports suggested that Modi feared that if Joshi travelled by train, BJP workers in Gujarat would greet him at every railway station on the way.

“Joshi’s resignation from the national executive is just the beginning, not the end,” says a middle-level BJP leader. The question the media should be asking, he suggests, is: why does the Gujarat strongman seem so scared of the much less-known Joshi?

By all accounts, Joshi has not even been to Gujarat for the last four years. Party insiders also confirm that Modi and Joshi have neither met nor spoken at any time in the last 7-8 years. “What happened in Mumbai had never happened in the BJP before,” says a party old-timer. “Never before has the party asked a national executive member to resign because another member did not like his face.”

It happened because the BJP is in a state of flux and the leaders no longer see eye to eye, he admitted. Differences between party president Nitin Gadkari and Lal Krishna Advani have spilled out in public. This has created an internal crisis and the strongarm tactics of Narendra Modi are perceived as the least of the party’s problems at the moment. Moreover, Modi’s at the peak of his political career and has used the media and PR agencies to build his image.

Joshi himself is willing to speak only on the controversy surrounding the hoardings that appeared in his support in Ahmedabad and New Delhi recently. While they appeared to take a dig at Modi, Joshi denies any knowledge or role. “If people close to me had put them up, wouldn’t they have done it in other places too? And wouldn’t they have hit the streets and taken out rallies?” he asks. He seems to believe the hoardings had been put up to embarrass him and accuse him of playing mischief.

“Modi’s scared of Joshi as he’s aware of the latter’s organisational abilities,” says an RSS pracharak. Joshi is also more accessible, more gentle, more humane than Modi, he elaborates. Now that the sleaze CD released to discredit him has been found to be doctored, Joshi could have gone to town proclaiming his innocence but kept a low and dignified profile.

Indeed, Modi’s arrogance seems to have put off most BJP leaders. He had even stopped taking calls from Gadkari earlier this year. “He had imperiously refused to allow Advaniji to start his anti-corruption yatra from Gujarat; he also refused to campaign in the last round of assembly polls, only because Joshi had been put in charge of the UP campaign,” says someone who claims to be close to Joshi. “The man is so intolerant and full of himself, how can anyone expect other leaders to work under him!”

They also blame Sonia Gandhi and her political secretary Ahmed Patel for allowing Modi to acquire a larger-than-life image. While the Congress president gives him a political lease of life by demonising him every second month, they allege a “deep understanding” or nexus between Modi and Patel. “How else does one explain the flow of central grants to the state? Gujarat is given more funds than it asks for,” they claim.

They also think projecting Modi as prime minister for the 2014 elections would be a liability for the NDA. Neither Naveen Patnaik nor Nitish Kumar would be ready for this, they feel. It would also immediately help consolidate the minority votes in Congress’s favour. Bihar, UP and Rajasthan together send 150 MPs to the Lok Sabha but not in any of them does Modi enjoy much support.

The country would also not accept an autocratic leader like Modi as PM, feels this section in the BJP. “Remember, it was Advaniji who spearheaded the Ramjanmabhoomi andolan but it was Vajpayeeji who became the prime minister,” says one of them. Even if Modi succeeds in projecting himself as the next PM, he adds, only half in jest, “rest assured, the BJP will defeat him”. And no guessing who Sanjay Joshi will be rooting for.

By Panini Anand with Uttam Sengupta

* [And eventually from the party -- Web ed]