It was a big day politically for
BJP but its prospect was marred by two hostile developments, the developments
that BJP cannot take on head-on to defend itself or to attack to deflect the
barrage of questions being shot on it.
Because, the developments owe
their genesis to an agency criticising or attacking which will only harm the
party.
Judicial activism has been a sore
point for Indian politics and the politicians running the show but has come as
the saving grace, the desperate ray of hope for millions of Indians cursed to
be crushed under political apathy and corruption.
It is not that the judiciary is
corrupt. It is. It is, in fact, highly corrupt at lower levels but when the
judicial activism gets its flow from the apex judicial body, the Supreme Court
of India, it sends a stern message to the erratic institutions and individuals,
including the lower levels of judiciary. And this message is repeated every
time, whenever the Supreme Court wields the Constitutional hammer to rein in
the erring parties.
So, when the Supreme Court came
down heavily, twice, on the Indian government today, criticising it for 'repeated'
excuses on forming government in Delhi or conducting fresh elections and rapping
it for 'selective' disclosure of the names of the black money account holders, the
warning, the message was repeated again, but, with a severe symbolic blow to
BJP time.
And it was not about the issue of
government formation in Delhi. It was, as expected, about the black money
issue.
So, even if the Supreme Court's
direct question on 'how BJP would form the government' was embarrassing enough
as BJP cannot form the government in Delhi with ethical and transparent means, it
was humiliating and shocking when the apex court directed the BJP-led Union
Government to submit the list of all overseas account holders by tomorrow, an
issue on which the government had taken a U-turn on 'complete disclosure',
going as far as to appeal to the Supreme Court to review its 2011 order that
'had sought complete disclosure' of information.
Now, BJP could have championed
the cause, as it had been making promises and war-cry about it since the matter
started getting wider attention with the PIL in Supreme Court in 2009. It was
one of the major poll planks of BJP and Narendra Modi spoke at length about it.
But, they could not champion it,
even if they had the intent. They failed in recognizing the pulse and packaging
the communication.
Sooner or later, they had to
reveal all the names because it was a Supreme Court monitored probe. But the
way they made statements with selective disclosures of three names only and
talked of revealing more names in stages and phases with no definite timeline
made for negative headlines and indicated of political motives to score
political mileage. The Supreme Court Bench would have all these aspects under
consideration while dealing the blow to the ruling party today.
So, the championing edge that BJP
carved and used in the days before May 26, 2014, the day Narendra Modi's
government was inaugurated, was lost today.
What BJP should have done had to
be put into motion by the Supreme Court and the NDA government led by BJP acted
in the way similar to that of practiced by Manmohan Singh led UPA government.
BJP messed with the wrong pole here,
a pole that has remained the very few avenues left where the common Indian can
pin his hopes hoping for getting the truth out of web of political U-turns.
BJP, its leaders, and its rank
and file - they simply lost the Black Money advantage today.