Amit Shah, the Bharatiya Janata Party president, likes to play hardball. Barring some missteps, his take-no-prisoners style of dealing with his political opponents has delivered in spades for his party so far. But when you keep raising the stakes for everybody, the chances are you will lose some time.

The narrow win of arch rival Ahmed Patel, Sonia Gandhi’s right-hand man and Shah’s bete noire, in the Gujarat Rajya Sabha poll yesterday (8 August), should give him cause for pause. It was a cliffhanger, with the counting not being taken up until the challenges posed by the Congress at the Election Commission level were disposed of just before midnight. Two Congress MLAs’ votes which went against the party were invalidated. The results, which emerged only in the wee hours of the morning, could not have pleased Shah. What should have been a cause for celebration, given the easy wins he and Smriti Irani scored in the polls, ended up giving the party a bloody nose due to Shah’s obsessive focus on giving Patel a shock. This has ensured that the media will focus on this one loss, and not the easy wins in the other two seats. If there is a clear case of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory, this one is Exhibit A.

All the efforts to ensure defections and cross-voting ended up raising the stakes for the BJP, with the Congress fighting it out like its life depended on it, and the ultimate vote (Patel got his minimum 44 votes through unexpected cross-voting by the lone JDU MLA), after the Election Commission decided that the votes of two Congress MLAs should not be counted. The validity of this decision can still be challenged in courts, but the question Shah should ask himself is whether it is worth raising the stakes even higher, when there is no certainty the courts will see things his way.

The game of cross and double-cross can be played by all parties, and the BJP has egg on its face today precisely because it invested too much capital in defeating one man, albeit an important one.

While this one additional seat would not have made too much of a difference to the BJP in the Rajya Sabha, it has lost many other things in the process.

One, it has woken up the Congress to the smell of hard-fought victory. A party that was withering at the roots has been rejuvenated by this one fight-to-the-finish event. While this does not mean the Congress party’s existential crisis is over, in the short run there will be a spring in its step, having managed to spike Shah’s guns.

Two, for a government keen to move more legislation through the Rajya Sabha, there will be some need to get opposition votes on its side some time or the other. By making the Congress a permanent enemy, the BJP has planted the seeds for more disruptions in parliament.

Three, playing hardball with political parties gives the BJP’s enemies one more reason to hang together. When someone comes across as too powerful, it is normal for the rest to band together for survival.

Four, more important than the extra Rajya Sabha seat is the forthcoming Gujarat assembly election. This needless distraction has frittered away the energies of the party. This does not mean the BJP will be struggling in the December polls, but it has needlessly made it even more of a prestige fight than it always was. Patel will now seek to build a gathbandhan to do as much damage to the BJP in Gujarat as possible.

The moral of the story is this: it is okay to fight hard to win, but it is equally important to pull back when things are not going your way. There are times when you must learn to let things be and not keep raising the stakes higher and higher till even a minor loss looks like a catastrophe.

Shah has probably overplayed his hand in the Rajya Sabha polls this time.

Prestige Battle

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