"No," a general secretary on the other end of the line replied. The caller, considered a prominent member of the anti-Raman Singh camp in Chhattisgarh politics, was elated. But he was a bit deflated when the general secretary added that no prominent BJP leader from Chhattisgarh had been included in the list of star campaigners for the Bihar elections.
This sparked debate in the corridors of power. While some experts linked it to the BJP's internal politics at the Centre, psephologists surmised it could be part of the BJP's strategy to capture the Bihar citadel. Wary of the caste factor, the party does not want to antagonise any group, especially the backward classes.
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Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call to end caste-based politics in Bihar, a deep-rooted tussle between BJP leaders from the upper castes and other backward classes is spilling out into the open. The party is in a dilemma whether to bet on upper caste leaders and use them to campaign in the state polls, which are crucial for both the prime minister and the party president, Amit Shah. The party fears that a campaign led by upper caste leaders would have minimum impact on backward caste voters; instead, it could damage the BJP's perception among them.
Chhattisgarh is no exception in this regard. BJP's star campaigners in the state are either from the upper castes or are Baniyas. Three-time Chief Minister Raman Singh belongs to the Rajput community - a factor that has kept him away from the Bihar polls. Brijmohan Agrawal, the number two in the state government and the BJP's face in the state, also failed to find a place on the Bihar list of campaigners. He belongs to the business-inclined Agrawal community. Prem Prakash Pandey, a state minister and the party's Bihari face in Chhattisgarh, has also not been invited to campaign in Bihar. He comes from a Brahmin family.
Leaders from Chhattisgarh have been kept away from campaigning in Bihar despite the fact that the two states share a strong bond. Bihar workers are employed in most of the industrial areas of mineral-rich Chhattisgarh. BJP workers from Chhattisgarh are camping in different parts of Bihar, albeit for management and logistical assignments.
"Earlier, leaders from Chhattisgarh were invited to campaign in Bihar as they were instrumental in luring those whose kith and kin were living and working in Chhattisgarh," former BJP leader Virendra Pandey said. Before the formation of Jharkhand, undivided Bihar shared borders with Chhattisgarh in the north and the east. Leaders from Bihar would come to Chhattisgarh for election campaigns.
The BJP's poll managers in Patna are confident that the party's support base among the upper castes will remain intact; they believe the party needs to concentrate on the backward classes vote bank, which is believed to favour the Nitish Kumar- and Lalu Prasad-led Janata Parivar alliance. The BJP has acknowledged that after two phases of polling in Bihar it has failed to split the core votes accruing to the grand alliance. The party has also not been successful in making a breach in the Rashtriya Janata Dal's traditional Yadav citadel or blocking the mutual transfer of votes between Prasad and Kumar.
Singh's opponents have another theory: Shah who has shaped the party's campaign in Bihar, dropped Singh from the list of campaigners, possibly because the latter is considered close to Shah's predecessor Rajnath Singh. But observers say the BJP managers wanted to bank on leaders from the backward classes, thus upper caste chief ministers were not pressed into service.
Neither Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje nor her Maharashtra counterpart Devendra Fadnavis - both from upper castes and considered good orators - has been invited to campaign in Bihar. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is the only star campaigner for the party in Bihar in terms of chief ministers. Of course, Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das canvassed in the state, but it was Chouhan, who was given prominence.
That the BJP's poll strategists are relying heavily on votes from the backward classes can be gauged from reports that Madhya Pradesh has been projected as the growth model for Bihar instead of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, both of which outshone Bihar in the recently released World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index.