BJP Missed Call Membership Goes Awry; Lesson for Other Parties

By Neelu Vyas

BJP must send a thank you card to the residents of Tukson village in Reasi district of the Jammu province. The village residents exposed how terrorists are trying to infiltrate into the saffron party in the name of a membership drive, perhaps for the first time when a party office bearer turns out to be a wanted terrorist.

The residents of Tukson apprehended Talib Hussain Shah and his accomplice Ahmad Dar, both LeT terrorists having links with Pakistan. Post the arrest it was discovered that Talib had joined BJP as the IT and Social Media in-charge for its minority cell on May 8, this year. After his pictures with various BJP leaders including Home Minister Amit Shah BJP, were flashed, the party denied its links with Talib Hussain dismissing it as a conspiracy by Pakistan.  This incident coming right after the association of Udaipur beheading accused Riyaz Atari with the BJP Minority Morcha, several unanswered questions have been raised.

Membership drives have become so vulnerable in these times of online registrations, where the aims and aspirations of all political parties to increase their members and register a ground presence is not only a compulsion, but a tactics for political survival. In the case of BJP, what’s happening  is an outright compromise with the security apparatus, where there seems to be no checks and balances, bypassing verification,  no authentication of criminal antecedents and this seems to be emerging as a new terror module where terrorists  can target party offices , top leadership and cater to terror in a more impactful manner . 

It is time now for BJP to pause and think about its effortless and trouble-free missed call membership drive.  BJP needs to overhaul its policy of 'give a missed call and we will register you as a member of BJP'. With more than 15 crore members under its belt, the party needs to initiate a validation or an attestation process. Without proper verification, BJP is opening floodgates to a big terror plot, which could become a lurking danger at the national level.  Coming as it does in a Union territory like Jammu and Kashmir, where infiltration of terrorists is rampant in the various echelons of the society, there is all the more a bigger need to look at the missed call programme with a toothcomb. 

The party needs to do some introspection that could give BJP some concession in the wake of accusations that the party bears an overwhelming hatred for the Muslim community, specially in context of recent controversial comments made by suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma, followed by the ignominy at the hands of the Islamic nations, excavation of mosques, bulldozers razing houses of innocent Muslims. In the light of these incidents, BJP now seems desperate to please the community to prove its secular credentials. Minority Morcha of Bhartiya Janta Party should not become most potent vehicle to prove this.

If at all this secular pretence is a strategy to win over Muslims, it’s an exercise replete with danger almost contrary to it's ideological, nationalistic and terror free India agenda. When BJP denies tickets to Muslims in Rajya Sabha, Vidhan Sabhas or Lok Sabha elections, this cosmetic exercise of wooing Muslims through its Minority Morcha, becomes ceremonial and ornamental and this make-believe agenda ends up embarrassing and exposing BJP of its secular sham. Amidst these questions what raises hackles, is the deafening silence of National Investigative Agency and Home Minister Amit Shah on something which could become lethal for the communal harmony of the country 

Over the years expanding membership is a routine exercise for BJP ahead of any assembly elections, more so as a message to the voters on its rising popularity and that inflated memberships are testing grounds to uproot the opposition regimes. The party has publicised the missed call membership programme as a huge success, projecting the inflated numbers as having surpassed the membership of the Communist Party of China. This could look and feel like a clincher for the recall and popularity campaigns, but Talibi Hussain Shah's link with LeT definitely has put the membership drive of BJP in a vulnerable situation.

This incident is just not about the susceptibility of BJP, but certainly a learning lesson for other political parties as well, as the political structures seem to be the new fertile grounds for terrorists and who knows it might manifest into an apocalypse never imagined in the wildest dream.

If such a faux pas had happened in the case of any other political party or its similar wing, hell would have broken loose and the parties would have been politically executed  and deemed as traitors, but BJP for now can only be defensive .