Modi 3.0 regains swagger with clever handling of northern NDA allies

Up until June 2024, the question of his government being destabilised by mercurial allies had never troubled Modi as he had always headed regimes in which his BJP enjoyed a majority of its own; the numerical strength or electoral heft of other NDA partners simply did not matter.

Now, suddenly, the diminished tally of 240 seats for the BJP had made Modi’s survival in office dependent on the mercy of unpredictable allies such as Nitish Kumar of the JD(U) and N Chandrababu Naidu of the TDP.

Even smaller constituents of the NDA, such as Chirag Paswan’s LJP-RV, Jayant Chaudhary’s RLD, Anupriya Patel’s Apna Dal and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAM, appeared to be indispensable for Modi and the BJP for a change.

Vulnerable Modi

The altered power dynamics were also evident in the composition of Modi’s council of ministers for his third term in office.

The past decade had seen Modi dispense ministerial berths to allies with a tight fist. At the end of his first term in office, his 71-member council of ministers had only five members from the BJP’s allies. Five years later, this number fell to just two in a 72-member council of ministers.

As he began his third term on June 9, 2024, Modi offered 11 berths, including five of cabinet rank, to allies in a 72-member council of ministers.

Modi’s uncharacteristic largesse for allies was borne out of his own necessity; perhaps even vulnerability.

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Opposition's joy

The Opposition’s INDIA bloc, riding on its shrill ‘Save Constitution’ pitch aimed at weaning away Dalits, tribals and backward castes from the BJP, had dragged the saffron party 32 seats below the 272-seat majority mark in Lok Sabha for the first time in a decade.

The biggest losses for the BJP had come from UP and Maharashtra, both states where these historically oppressed and backward communities had ditched the party for the INDIA bloc. In Bihar, where the INDIA challenge had been staved off to a great extent, victory margins of most BJP and other NDA candidates came crashing down from those of the previous two elections.

It was no wonder that as Modi and his ministers were being sworn-in, the Opposition, despite being handed a defeat for a third straight Lok Sabha election, chose to see the glass as being half-full.

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INDIA bloc leaders presented their defeat as both a moral and ideological victory while mocking Modi’s victory for missing the bombastic char sau paar (400 plus) seat target by a good 160 seats.

Big doles for allies

That Modi was now dependent on the baisakhi (crutches) of Nitish and Naidu was a common refrain among Opposition leaders. In Delhi’s power corridors, some wondered who between Nitish and Naidu would slip out first from Modi’s grip, while others speculated over the extent to which Modi will stoop to eventually conquer.

A month on, as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the first Union Budget of Modi’s third term, the answer became somewhat apparent. While neither Nitish’s Bihar nor Naidu’s Andhra Pradesh got the special category status and financial package the JD(U) and TDP had ostensibly lobbied hard for, substantial doles were handed out to both states.

Bihar marched away with the largest share of the budget pie with financial outlays made for projects and schemes earmarked for the totalling nearly Rs 1 lakh-crore – the equivalent of the total budget presented this year by the BJP’s Delhi government. Of course, this massive bounty was also because the eastern state is due for polls later this year but signs that Modi not just had eyes on winning votes but also on winning over his allies were clear.

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Modi ensured that key projects and schemes were earmarked for regions where Paswan’s LJP-RV, Manjhi’s HAM and the JD (U) draw their respective electoral support from within Bihar. That the outreach also wooed caste groups that had strayed away from the NDA two months earlier wasn’t lost on anyone either.

Nurturing UP allies

In UP too, Modi adopted a similar strategy. Ally Anupriya Patel, a backward caste leader from Mirzapur in financially and socially backward eastern UP, had become used to being roped in as minister in the previous two regimes, not from the beginning but only months ahead of elections in her state – the first time in July 2016 and then in July 2021.

This time round, despite being the lone MP from her party, Patel was made a minister the same day Modi took oath as PM.

Clearly, from the very beginning of his third term, Modi made sure that his allies in the key Hindi heartland states of UP and Bihar were given no grounds to play truant.

Not an alliance of equals

As for Modi’s allies from Maharashtra, the once tainted Eknath Shinde of Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar of the NCP, who cleansed themselves of all sin after splitting their parent parties to ally with the BJP, the unexpected NDA triumph in their state towards the end of 2024 and the share in power it brought along, has been enough for now to earn their loyalty.

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Individually and collectively, these efforts of the past year coupled with Modi’s volte face in approving a nationwide caste census – a demand publicly supported by Anupriya Patel, Chirag Paswan, Jayant Chaudhary, Nitish, Manjhi, et al, despite the BJP’s equally vociferous resistance of the past – have paid off in disciplining allies.

So much so that Nitish, despite the real and potent threat to his party’s electoral prospects in the upcoming Bihar polls, quietly caved in when the government got the Waqf Amendment Bill enacted.

Allies need to be wary

Yet, beyond all of this bonhomie, political commentators believe there are reasons that should, variously, compel the BJP’s allies to be wary of Modi’s shenanigans.

“At the surface, a lot of what Modi has done over the past year may seem like he has gone against his style to keep allies happy but there are compelling reasons for these parties to be wary of him," Lucknow-based veteran journalist Sharat Pradhan told The Federal.

"Most of his allies know that their electoral success is tied to Modi; on their own, Anupriya Patel or Jayant Chaudhary won’t win a single seat in UP. Nitish and Chirag have their own base but they also benefit electorally from the extra votes they get on account of Modi. To this extent, they have a symbiotic relationship of sorts but this doesn’t mean that it is an alliance of equals,” he added.

Pradhan explained further: “The BJP, particularly under Modi, has an insatiable expansionist agenda; all its decisions and policies stem from this agenda and so, the question that the allies need to ask themselves is how long before the BJP sets its eyes on expanding into their strongholds and is there really anything that they can do to prevent this.”

Nitish on the back foot

Chittaranjan Mishra, professor at Gorakhpur University and a keen observer of Purvanchali politics, believes the “absolute capitulation” before Modi by Anupriya Patel in eastern UP and Chirag Paswan in Bihar is “rooted in a combination of self-preservation and self-promotion” and cautioned that in Bihar, the biggest loser in this politics would be Nitish Kumar.

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“Each of the BJP’s allies in UP and Bihar, with the exception of Nitish, cater to specific caste groups; the BJP is keeping them happy with ministerial berths but it is also using them to expand its independent hold over their communities,” Mishra told The Federal.

Having Anupriya on his side also serves another wily purpose for Modi, he says, explaining that along with other backward caste leaders of the BJP, including deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya, the Apna Dal chief routinely takes potshots against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, whose uneasy equations with the Prime Minister are hardly a secret.

“Every few months, you will see Anupriya or someone from her party say something about deteriorating law and order in UP or atrocities on backward castes and Dalits and hint that Yogi is responsible for these lapses. Then people like Maurya jump in to echo Anupriya... this keeps Delhi happy,” Mishra said.

The Bihar twist

If Anupriya is being used to unsettle one of the BJP’s own in UP, in neighbouring Bihar, a similar strategy is apparently being used but with a twist – using one ally to undercut another.

Patna-based political analyst Arun Kumar told The Federal, “The BJP knows that the only way it can become a long-term senior partner in the Bihar NDA, is if the JD(U) loses ground. In the 2020 elections, BJP used Chirag Paswan to hurt the JD(U) and in this election, Chirag wants constituencies that are traditionally in the JD(U) quota.

"This is why Chirag is willing to leave central politics and contest the Bihar polls. This suits the BJP because it can blunt the Dalit and backward caste outreach of (RJD leader) Tejaswhi Yadav and Rahul Gandhi by giving the NDA a credible Dalit face in state politics and simultaneously keep Nitish under check too. Whichever way you look at it, the bigger gain will be of the BJP."

At Modi's mercy

A section of JD (U) leaders also concede that a big part of Modi’s strategy in Bihar involves usurping the political ground held by Nitish for the past nearly 25 years. However, with his personal electoral credibility vastly eroded due to the frequent somersaults he has made between the NDA and Grand Alliance in Bihar over the past decade and his health a matter of heady speculation, sources said that Nitish is now “largely at Modi’s mercy”.

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A senior JD (U) leader told The Federal that Nitish’s inability to push Modi to give Bihar a special financial package, list the increased Bihar reservations under the Constitution’s 9th Schedule and tone down the “problematic provisions of the Waqf Amendment Act” – all hot political issues in the state – was also because of the CM “surrounding himself with a coterie of dubious and opportunistic leaders who feel being on Modi’s side serves their own political interests even if it doesn’t help the JD (U) as a party... if the JD (U) performs poorly in the Bihar polls, these leaders will quickly switch to the BJP.”

Modi may have entered his third term as Prime Minister limping on the Nitish-Naidu baisakhi. A year on, while he still needs these allies to run a stable government, he seems to have regained the steady stride that marked his previous two terms in office.

Coming soon: Will NDA crack southern fortress in Modi's third tenure?