BJP's star campaigner faces the heat: PM Modi wants all polls to be held together

Modi addressed 475 rallies over 25 states and covered nearly 300,000 kilometres during the 2014 general elections

Bhartiya Jnata Party's (BJP's) face and star campaigner Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to be frustrated by frequent elections. 

According to the Economic Times, ahead of the BJP's national executive meeting on March 19, Modi had suggested the idea of holding simultaneous elections for Parliament, Assemblies, urban local bodies and panchayat bodies.

The prime minister, according to media reports, blamed frequent polls for holding up his party's development agenda and said that they imposed a huge expense.    

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Speaking to The Indian Express, a BJP leader, who had been present at the meeting, said: “The prime Minister was talking about political workers spending a lot of time electioneering. As a result, they get less time for social work. The prime minister wanted party workers to devote more time to taking people-friendly programmes of the governments to the grassroots.”

“Modi said when he suggested it at the all-party meeting, almost all political leaders agreed with him. The BJP is in favour of this idea,” the leader added.

Earlier this month, while commenting upon the prime minister's campaigning style, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor had said that Modi should conduct himself as "the prime minister of a country" and not as a "party campaigner".

"This kind of politics should not be practiced by the prime minister. He is the prime minister of the country and he should not be going to every state where there is an election or where there has recently been an election in order to conduct himself like a party campaigner," Tharoor had said.

According to The Indian Express, Modi, who had addressed 475 rallies over 25 states and covered nearly 300,000 kilometres during the 2014 general elections, addressed close to 40 rallies in poll-bound Bihar last year, the highest in any Assembly election since since his Lok Sabha victory in May 2014. 

According to the same report, the prime minister had addressed 27 rallies in the run up to the Maharashtra Assembly polls in 2014, barely months after winning the thumping majority in the Lok Sabha. 

However, despite the prime minister's best efforts, the BJP's debacle in Bihar illustrated that he could not serve as a panacea for all of the party's challenges. 

In the aftermath of the Bihar elections, a Business Standard column said: "The story that is over is Narendra Modi as an all-conquering political Chakravartin with his Aswamedha horse ticking off one state after another."

However, the result in Bihar has not deterred the BJP. 

Before leaving for Brussels late Tuesday night, the prime minister was holding rallies in Assam for the upcoming state Assembly elections. A BJP release on Saturday had revealed that Modi would address five public meetings in Assam on Saturday and two others on Sunday. 

With the assembly elections a few months away in Tamil Nadu, Modi had in February addressed a public meeting, billed by the party as the launch of its poll campaign in the state and "a turning point rally", in Coimbatore. 

Earlier this month, BJP's West Bengal unit chief Dilip Ghosh had said that Modi would likely address at least 10 public meetings across the state as part of the party's campaign for the Assembly polls.

Critics say that the prime minister never got out of the election phase after winning a thumping majority in 2014.   

Till date, Modi has campaigned in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi and Bihar Assembly elections. 

With the Assembly polls in West Bengal, Kerala, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry around the corner, Modi, who is on a trip to Washington for the Nuclear Security Summit, might find himself spread thin.