In political Arthasastra, killing many birds with one stone is a usual tactic. In the ongoing war between the BJP government and the Opposition over L’affaire Lalit Modi, the aim of the Congress party is to kill many birds to get the big bird, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Lalitgate is the latest in a series of efforts to weaken the PM, who has been single-mindedly pursuing the agenda of good governance, Swachh Bharat, economic revival, internal security, infrastructure development and aggressively reinventing India’s profile overseas. He is aided by a handful of trusted ministers and chief ministers who have a track record of success—Sushma Swaraj, Smriti Irani, Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje. The BJP has retaliated with the strategy of minimum talk and maximum loyalty by standing by its ministers.
So, when the Rajasthan chief minister, who is under fire by the Congress and sections of the media for helping deposed IPL founder Lalit Modi, flew into Delhi by helicopter at 9.15 am from Jaipur to attend the Niti Ayog meeting and left at noon, it was just that: a Chief Minister marking her presence at an important federal meet and not an embattled leader trying to plead her case with a beleaguered leadership. “The CM was in Delhi solely for the NITI Aayog meeting. Later she returned to Jaipur for there were no prior appointments, ” her office clarified.
The decision to support Raje was taken by the core group of the BJP’s decision-makers: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, RSS General Secretary Ram Lal and Krishna Gopal, Joint Secretary of the RSS. A series of meetings, collective and individual, were held by this informal politburo to debate the issue. They came to the conclusion that the Congress attack on ministers is in reality directed against the prime minister. The party, worried that the nationalist PM was making a lasting impact by promoting Indian culture, yoga, Ayurveda and Sanskrit has made him their main target.
On June 14, Sushma Swaraj came under fire from the Congress for helping Lalit Modi get documents to fly from London to Lisbon for his wife’s Minal’s cancer treatment. Within hours, Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah strongly defended her, saying the help was extended on “humanitarian grounds.” To ultimately get Modi, the Congress knows it has to hobble the credibility of his star performers first. The first on the radar was Rajnath Singh, against whom a whisper campaign was started alleging a member of his family was peddling influence. Modi and Shah strongly supported Singh.