The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) election machinery has shifted into top gear in the poll-bound states. The three star campaigners of the BJP – Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath – are now holding multiple election rallies in a day to give effect to the party’s campaign blitzkrieg.
The BJP seems to be aiming to swing about five percent, who are the fence-sitter voters, with a high-decibel campaign while charging up the party’s committed voter base to shrug off their inertia and head to the polling booths.
Modi, after taking a brief pause, is leading the BJP’s charge in the election campaign. He held three rallies in Madhya Pradesh alone on Wednesday. BJP is evidently leaning heavily on the PM to electrify party workers as well as committed voters to put an extra effort to mobilise support for party candidates.
While Modi aims to cut into the popular perception that an assembly election is fought on local issues, the BJP has slotted clear roles to the party’s lead campaigners to build a multi-pronged poll narrative.
PM Modi’s Crucial Task: Countering Congress USPs
The BJP clearly went into the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh with unfavourable popular spotlight on local satraps – Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Vasundhara Raje, and Raman Singh.
The undertone in the build up to the poll campaign was that the local satraps, who carried the party’s flags for several years, are now visibly tired. The party was faced with the task of rallying the sagging morale of workers amid a deepening sense that the local leadership was somewhat jaded.
Shouldering the role of principal campaigner, PM Modi’s primary task was to counter the Congress’s principal poll planks built on demand for caste census, guarantee-based poll promises, and strong local leadership. No one else in the BJP has the popularity to blunt this focussed opposition strategy.
With Modi having spoken of his OBC (other backward caste) background in previous national and state elections, he took the Congress demand for caste census head-on.
In Telangana, he has promised a first chief minister from the OBC background, while asserting in Chhattisgarh that though the Congress talks of the interests of the backward castes and tribal groups, it was a BJP government that saw a tribal woman becoming President of India.
By announcing extension of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojna for five years, Modi has pitched the BJP’s top welfare measure against the Congress poll guarantees.
He hasn’t also shied away from taking sharp aim at Congress regional satraps Bhupesh Baghel (Mahadev betting app allegation), Ashok Gehlot (Red Diary).
HM Shah: Focus On Organisation, Tactics, Messaging
HM Shah is undertaking whirlwind tours of the poll-bound states, asserting that the people will celebrate three Diwalis soon: the actual festival, the BJP victory, and the inauguration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
While Shah leads the BJP’s charge in public meetings with incisive attacks on rivals, behind the scenes he urges party leaders in the states to close ranks. Shah’s focus is clearly on Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan where the BJP in popular perception is seen to be battling factionalism.
Shah is the principal general of the party’s electioneering battle unit who irons out all rough edges with his direct close-door meetings.
Being the main tactician of the BJP’s poll strategy, Shah is seeking out to pin down the Congress in the Assembly polls by levelling allegations of “corruption, commission, communal riots, and criminal politics”.
By seeking to brand the Congress with allround governance failure, Shah realises he has to blunt the guarantee-based poll plank of the Mallikarjuna Kharge-led outfit. He is clearly aware of the impact the Congress guarantees had in the Karnataka assembly election.
Yogi Adityanath: Saffron Hardliner, Bulldozer
The BJP’s multi-pronged poll narrative also focuses sharply on Congress’s alleged appeasement politics and law and order failures. The BJP, thus, has unleashed Adityanath to remind the people in Rajasthan of the beheading of Kanhaiya Lal, a tailor.
The UP chief minister is working up the emotional quotient in the elections by raining barbs on the Congress for appeasement politics, allegedly sheltering cow-smugglers and criminals who attack Hindu saints and their ashrams, and also invoking love jihad on the poll turf.
The BJP’s bid to push the law and order issue to the forefront of the election campaigns in Rajasthan where the saffron outfit has been raising incidents of murders and rapes at the national level is being articulated by Adityanath as he talks of bulldozer and a crackdown against criminals in UP.
Also, the UP chief minister is being heavily deployed for poll duty by the BJP to push the Ram Temple construction up higher in the popular electoral discourse. Adityanath, thus, invites people to visit Ayodhya while mocking the Congress for allegedly having acted as a roadblock for the temple’s construction.
While the top three BJP campaigners are now executing specific roles on the campaign trail, the party chief JP Nadda is also hard at work on the ground explaining the BJP’s focus on good governance and the benefits of “double-engine sarkar” to voters while also spending time with party workers to boost their morale.
BJP’s intense campaign is in line with the party’s penchant to fight it out hard and chase the extra vote all the time. The Modi-led BJP takes up an election campaign to not just win the immediate poll but also to prepare for the next battle.
This is clearly visible in these assembly elections as the top leaders’ sights are clearly set on the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Manish Anand is a senior Delhi-based journalist. Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.
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