On April 6, BJP which currently boasts of being the world’s largest political outfit turned 37 and it has been quite a roller coaster ride for the saffron outfit. On the same day in 1980, the party broke away from Janata Party which got decimated in the 1980 Lok Sabha polls. The party patrons Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani decided to part ways from the socialist outfit and floated their new party under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
1984 further plummeted the fortunes of BJP and it just managed to win 2 seats out of the 543 seats it contested.
The party managed to win a seat apiece in Andhra and Gujarat. In 1989, the party made LK Advani its president and bagged 89 seats in the 9th Lok Sabha polls. The party supported VP Singh government only to withdraw it later in the wake of Ram Temple wave and Advani embarked on a Rath Yatra from Somnath to Ayodhya.
In 1991 Lok Sabha elections, BJP went on to become the principal opposition party when it fought the elections under the presidentship of Murli Manohar Joshi.
Next year, Advani was again at the helm of the affairs and in 1996, party became the single largest party bagging 161 seats and tasted power for the first time albeit for 13 days only.
In 1998, it again topped the seats tally and managed to win 182 seats and formed a rainbow coalition of 13 parties. Sadly, the government fell after 13 months. In 1999, the party again won 182 seats and formed a coalition government and lasted for a full tenure.
Since 2004 polls, the electoral fortunes of BJP took a turn southwards and party just managed 138 seats and failed to return to power. The 14th Lok Sabha saw it securing its lowest numbers ever since 1991 and it managed just 116 seats.
Finally, the party under the leadership of Narendra Modi ended its political exile and managed to win 283 seats, thereby becoming the first political party to do so since 1984 on its own.
The party is a cadre based party and is supported by its parent organisation RSS.
The party is unique in having the indigenous idea of ‘integral humanism’ in its party constitution when all other parties are flooded with western concepts like secularism, socialism etc. The party’s belief in cultural nationalism sets it apart as it believes in economic, political and social reconstruction of the country based om Bhartiya Sanskriti and that is why ban on cow slaughter has been on the top of the party manifesto. The party has done so in Maharashtra and more recently in Uttar Pradesh where it has indiscriminately closed illegal abattoirs.
Another aspect which sets BJP apart from other parties is the fact that it is relatively free from ‘high profile corruption’ and dynastic progression in the party ranks.
The party rule can be credited with ushering in many path breaking economic reforms like in the power sector in 2003, disinvestment of PSUs to raise revenues, setting up of new IITs, IIMs, IISCs as well as IIITs across the country, National Highways, mobile telephony etc. The fiscal breather provided by the FRBM act 2003 gave the successive UPA governments to roll out populist schemes like NREGA and farmer loan waivers.
In its second tenure that has started since May 2014, the party has emphasised on Make in India, Swachh Bharat Mission and development of tourist circuits to showcase the rich cultural heritage of the country. This makes the party as the true inheritor of the Gandhian legacy as it has reinvented Swadeshi, cleanliness and Bhartiya which are the cornerstones of Gandhian philosophy.
The party looks firm solid to win another tenure at least in 2019 given the visible changes it has managed to put into effect through its flagship programmes.
The fact that the party has bounced back from its worst of the lows speaks volumes about its character and that more parties are now willing to rope it into a coalition shows that it is no more a political pariah.
BJP should avoid repeating the mistakes that it committed in its previous rule and look to extend itself in states where it has never succeeded before like in West Bengal and Kerala and hopefully some fine day, it realises its aim of “Congress Mukt Bharat”.