The rest is history, as they say. Vajpayee was soon to have firsthand experience of Banerjee’s mercurial politics. She left the NDA in 2001 over the Tehelka expose and went with the Congress in the Assembly elections that year. She returned to the NDA ahead of the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, only to leave it again after the 2006 Assembly elections. That was the final parting. Their alliance had failed to click in the last three elections—two to the Assembly and one to Parliament. For her, the BJP’s political utility in her fight against the Left was over. Today, she might rue the fact that she gave the BJP legitimacy and credibility as a political force in West Bengal.
Former Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik might have similar feelings. A Delhi-based socialite, he was known as someone who loved his Dunhill cigarettes and Famous Grouse whisky when his father, Biju Patnaik, passed away in 1997. The BJP had little presence in Odisha. Naveen needed a mentor and guide to deal with his late father’s wily colleagues in the Janata Dal. Vajpayee and Pramod Mahajan promptly held his hand and helped him form and gain control of the Biju Janata Dal. Both sides benefited from this alliance. The BJP got its first MP—as many as seven, in fact—from Odisha in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections. Together, they brought down the Congress government two years later. The BJP remained a junior partner, of course. By 2009, Patnaik was a seasoned politician and saw a threat in the BJP’s widening footprint. He broke ties with the party ahead of the 2009 elections, leaving it tottering for the next decade.
Let’s look at former Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. Many in the political circles sympathise with him today. See how the BJP used and threw him aside, they say. It’s not so simple, though. Remember that Kumar was no mass leader when he fell out with Lalu Yadav and formed the Samata Party in 1994 with George Fernandes. When they entered into an alliance with the BJP in the 1996 general elections, Vajpayee-Advani’s party was a bigger force. Yet, the duo let Kumar grow into a bigger brother in the alliance and use the BJP at his whim and political convenience. For someone who had cancelled a dinner in Patna to snub the then Gujarat chief minister in 2010, Kumar tested Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s patience even when the latter was at the height of his popularity. One can always argue that it was because Bihar’s so-called ‘Paltu Ram’ kept the BJP insecure and guarded.
What’s common between Patnaik, Kumar, and Banerjee? One, they used Vajpayee-Advani’s BJP to grow into big-time politicians. Two, they helped the BJP shed its political untouchability and expand its footprint in different states. Three, the relationship was transactional, especially for these regional satraps who thought the BJP was to be used and dumped at will.
When Bal Thackeray had fielded two Shiv Sena leaders on the BJP’s symbol in the 1984 elections—a precursor to their formal alliance in subsequent elections—little did he know that he was laying the ground for the Sena to play a second fiddle to the BJP in the Devendra Fadnavis government 30 years later. In 2019, his son Uddhav Thackeray parted ways with the BJP and eventually lost his party to Eknath Shinde.
There are examples galore. There was a time when regional parties found in the BJP a convenient ally in their fight against then-dominant Congress—or the Left in Bengal, for that matter. What has happened to Banerjee, Patnaik, Kumar, Thackeray and many others today is that they didn’t factor in the fact that Modi-Shah’s BJP is different. And that’s probably the first lesson the BJP’s allies today must learn: they don’t use Modi-Shah’s BJP; it’s the other way round.
Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM) chief Upendra Kushwaha is the latest example. In 2013, months before Nitish Kumar quit the NDA, Kushwaha was smart enough to quit the Janata Dal (United) and float his own outfit, Rashtriya Lok Samata Party. He later joined the NDA and reaped rich dividends, with his party winning all three seats it contested in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He was rewarded with a ministry at the Centre. Kushwaha obviously got the wrong idea about his and his party’s popularity, as he quit the Modi government and the NDA ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He got a reality check in the 2019 parliamentary and 2020 Assembly elections. By 2023, he was back in the NDA fold with his new party, RLM.
As it is, the BJP has refused to field Kushwaha’s son, Deepak, in the Legislative Council election, which has made his stay in the Samrat Choudhary-led government untenable beyond a point. That’s because Kushwaha refused to merge his party with the BJP. The BJP did nominate him to the Rajya Sabha in 2024, but it now needs him to merge his party. Why would the BJP need another Kushwaha face when the chief minister is also a Kushwaha? The RLM chief refuses to accept the reality so far, but he has few options. The BJP holds all the cards today. If he wants to quit the NDA and resign from the Rajya Sabha to protest against his son’s impending exclusion from the Bihar Cabinet, the BJP wouldn’t call up to pacify him. It’s his choice.
To understand Modi-Shah’s alliance politics, let’s look at another example. Months before the 2021 Assembly elections in Assam, the BJP’s coalition partner in the state, the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), emerged as the single largest party in the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) election in 2020. The BJP instead went with the United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL), the second largest, to form the government in the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR). The national party couldn’t obviously live with the BPF’s domination. A miffed BPF then went with the Congress-led Opposition alliance in the 2021 Assembly elections, but ended up on the Opposition benches.
In September 2025, the BPF swept the BTC election, defeating the BJP-UPPL alliance. How did the BJP respond? Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma brought the BPF back into the government. In the subsequent Assembly elections, the BJP left the UPPL high and dry, giving 11 seats to the BPF and itself contesting four other seats in the BTR. The UPPL had to contest on its own and ended up with zero seats. Essentially, between the BPF and the UPPL, whichever regional party might lose or win, the BJP has to be on the winning side. If the UPPL in Assam or the RLM in Bihar is smarting today and feeling used, they must learn to live with it.
That’s the BJP of Modi-Shah. Regional satraps such as Patnaik, Kumar, and Banerjee might have used the party to their advantage—and vice-versa—in the old days, but the political landscape has changed. The BJP is the suzerain today, and allies must act as vassals to survive. It has to live with a few Chandrababu Naidus and EK Palaniswamis for now, but it’s a matter of time. In a role reversal, Modi-Shah’s BJP has no tolerance for ticks.
By the way, the former Congress leader who told me about the tick is a Cabinet minister in the Modi government today.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
