RSS functionary and former BJP general secretary Ram Madhav was Tuesday appointed the party in-charge for the Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir along with Union Minister G Kishan Reddy.
Madhav’s return to the organisation is closely linked to the BJP’s aspirations in J&K, a party leader said.
“With the party hoping to make a significant electoral impact in the Jammu region, the party leadership is keen on exploring possibilities at the stage of government formation or at least having a significant say in it,” the leader said.
“With his political connections and contacts across party lines and sections, Ram Madhav would be the best choice to help the BJP in it. No one in the BJP has been able to match his clout in the region,” the leader said.
While Madhav, who stitched the coalition for the party with the PDP in 2015, has been constantly in touch with the top leadership of the BJP, a section of party leaders said his return was made possible with a push from the RSS. They said the RSS leadership wanted the BJP to give responsibility to people who have worked for the organisation in the past.
Madhav’s return to the organisation to oversee the party’s electioneering in one of its most difficult terrains could be “challenging as well as promising,” a party leader said.
His appointment comes in the wake of BJP-RSS ties hitting a bump during the Lok Sabha election campaign when, in an interview to The Indian Express on May 17, BJP president J P Nadda, responding to a question on how the RSS presence had changed between the time of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and now, said, “Shuru mein hum aksham honge, thora kum honge, RSS ki zaroorat padti thi… Aaj hum badh gaye hain, saksham hai… toh BJP apne aap ko chalati hai (In the beginning, we would have been less capable, smaller and needed the RSS. Today, we have grown and we are capable. The BJP runs itself). That’s the difference.”
On June 10, in his first public remarks on the outcome of the elections in which the BJP fell short of a majority in Lok Sabha, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said a true sevak (one who serves people) does not have “ahankar” (arrogance) and works without causing any hurt to others. Referring to the bitter poll campaign, he said “decorum was not maintained”.
Madhav is known in BJP and RSS circles as someone with a keen interest in foreign affairs, J&K and the North-East. He stood out as a swayamsevak who worked quietly on the ground.
When Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014, Madhav was “loaned out” to the BJP and became party general secretary. He was keenly involved in the J&K elections – also playing a significant role in the alliance that was stitched with the PDP to form the government in the erstwhile state – and in the North-East where the BJP breached the Congress citadel in Assam in 2016, and then spread across the region.
“The party lost Delhi and Bihar, which were major reverses, but secured J&K and the North-East, leading to the perception that success beckoned where Ram Madhav was active,” said a BJP insider who did not wish to be identified.
After he was removed as general secretary in September 2020, Madhav receded from the limelight but continued his work, focusing on building bridges with conservative parties the world over via conclaves.
Late Tuesday evening, Madhav was rehabilitated, and that too on his J&K ‘turf’, an area he understands very well from the ideological perspective of the RSS and BJP.