NEW DELHI: Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari’s letter to Cabinet colleague Nirmala Sitharaman seeking the removal of GST on life and medical insurance premium on Wednesday sparked talks of internal dissent in the BJP.
Opposition Congress was the first to raise questions of one minister writing to another when the two could have picked up the phone and spoken.
“Could they not have talked to each other? Obviously there is something amiss here,” said a senior Congress leader with AICC General Secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh saying: “Nitin Jairam Gadkari’s letter to the FM on the Budget is a sure sign of internal dissent and rumblings against the non-biological PM.”
While the BJP was officially silent on the matter, sections privately wondered what led Gadkari to write a letter to Sitharaman and then ensure it went public.
Gadkari’s well-known proximity to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat only added to the internal dissent debate with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bhagwat’s equations after the 2024 Lok Sabha poll result are yet to unravel even though the RSS and BJP leaders recently met to discuss Haryana elections in signs of a thaw. It was their first meeting since national election results and since well-known differences within the Sangh parivar on approach to the Lok Sabha poll and strategies.
It is equally well-known and documented that Gadkari was Bhagwat’s preference when the RSS was looking to project BJP’s prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 General Wlections a position which then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi filled due to his mass popularity with the RSS and BJP cadres at the time.
As for Gadkari, ever since he was dropped from the BJP’s parliamentary board, the party’s highest decision making body in August 2022, he has off and on signalled unease with PM Modi.
Ahead of removal, Gadkari had, among other controversial things, said, “Today, what we are seeing in politics is 100 per cent about coming to power.” The remarks were seen as directed at the PM and his confidante Home Minister Amit Shah.
Of late, Gadkari has also been openly aligning with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath within the BJP. Yogi had campaigned for Gadkari in Nagpur at a time when Shiv Sena (UBT) claimed that the top BJP leadership was working against Gadkari in the segment.
“He is Ajatshatru (one with no enemies),” Yogi had said about the Transport Minister on the LS poll eve.
Interestingly, Uttar Pradesh CM, too, continues to hold on to the state despite the party’s poor show in Lok Sabha polls and attempts to attribute this below par performance to administrative failures. Like Gadkari, Yogi also has RSS backing.