BJP, Congress draw lessons from the 'Modi effect'

Two months after Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's repeat victory in the Gujarat Assembly polls, both the BJP and the Congress seem to have taken certain salutary lessons from the event. Named the Modi effect, there are at least three trends that have emerged from Modi's re-election in Gujarat.

Senior leaders in the BJP, including prime ministerial candidate LK Advani, have spoken about bucking anti-incumbency at the local level, especially in states where the party holds power, namely Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.

The party in its meetings has decided that at least 40 per cent of all sitting MLAs and MPs with regard to General Elections are to be replaced by new candidates, preferably by first-timers who carry no incumbency.

"The party has discussed this in detail and after looking Modi's success at Porbandar municipal elections, where all sitting corporators were dropped, and later in the Assembly polls its efficacy has been proved. There is also a feeling that we would have done better in the 2004 elections if we had dropped a large number of our sitting MPs, nearly 90 of them lost their seats in that election," said a senior party leader.

The party has also decided to take a leaf out of Modi's book when it comes to the campaign issues to be picked up.

"We have decided that governance issues or development are not enough to win elections. Strong emotional issues like Ram Setu and others are required to get people motivated to vote. Modi, with "maut ke saudagar" and the Sohrabuddin case, was a runaway success in Gujarat," said the leader.

The effect of Modi's victory on the Congress, however, has been the most dramatic. The party has decided not to induct dissidents en masse into its party at the cost of its own local leadership.

"In the Gujarat elections it was thought that anti-Modi dissidents will help us gain the crucial Saurashtra region, and that was the area here we did the worst having got the anti-incumbency of the Modi regime on our side," said a senior Congress leader.

At the post-mortem of the Gujarat results, senior leaders in the party put their foot down on inclusion of dissidents. Thus Janata Dal (S) dissident MP Prakash could barely get himself inducted into the Karnataka Congress, leave alone the 15 MLAs who wanted to follow him.