Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) looks close to forming the government in Manipur. This comes after the party couldn't win a single seat in the state in the 2012 Assembly polls.
The success for the party in Manipur comes on the heels of it having won the Assam Assembly polls in 2016 and later that year forming a government in Arunachal Pradesh. With its performance in Manipur, the BJP has established itself as a force in Northeast India.
The man behind BJP’s turnaround in Assam and Manipur is BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav. Ever since joining the BJP from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 2014, 52-year-old Madhav has been key to BJP’s success in Jammu and Kashmir as well.
In Manipur, Madhav has led the strategising for the BJP. On Saturday afternoon, Madhav sounded confident that the BJP would be able to form a government in Manipur in alliance with regional outfits like the Naga Peoples Front and National People’s Party.
The BJP’s improved performance in Manipur will further increase Madhav’s stature, perhaps enough to be thought about as current BJP President Amit Shah’s successor if the latter decides to move to Gujarat as the chief minister of that state.
Shah is said to be not averse to moving to Gujarat, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been unwilling to let him go. Shah is a member of the Gujarat legislative Assembly. The state is due for elections in December this year.
Madhav, who is two months older than Shah, is currently one of the eight national general secretaries of the party, but arguably the most important of them after his successes of the last three years.
In the Northeast, Madhav had led the BJP strategy to strike important alliances with smaller regional parties. In Assam, Madhav pursued the then Congress leader Himanta Biswa Sarma to join the BJP and goaded his party leadership to strike sensible alliances with outfits like Asom Gana Parishad and Bodoland People’s Front. The BJP won a famous and unprecedented victory in the Assam Assembly polls in mid-2016, forming its first ever government there.
In Jammu and Kashmir, Madhav led his party’s negotiations with the Peoples’ Democratic Party to help set up a coalition government, a first ever for the BJP in that state.
Madhav has also established himself as a commentator on foreign policy. He is one of the trustees of India Foundation, a think tank that has emerged as a forum for going beyond the Left-liberal perspective that has dominated political and academic discourse in the last few decades. Other trustees of the foundation are Union ministers Jayant Sinha and Nirmala Sitharaman.
Before joining the BJP in 2014, Madhav was the public face of the RSS. He was its spokesperson and was fluent not just in Hindi but also English. Madhav is also popular in New Delhi’s diplomatic circle.