Mahajan shares victory mantra with Naidu

A new bridge was built between the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) when Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu went to dinner at Pramod Mahajan's residence.

This was Naidu's last stop in Delhi, and not only was he served vegetarian Telugu food, but also given a thorough PowerPoint run-through of the BJP's electoral strategy in Rajasthan that has netted more seats for the BJP in this election than ever before.

Naidu only nibbles at food, but between spoonfuls of lemon rice (pulihora in Telugu), he had a host of questions.

How did the BJP manage its campaign? How many surveys did it get done? What was the size of the sample? What was the procedure of candidate selection?

The entire team of TDP members of Parliament was also present at the presentation conducted by Mahajan's computer wizards including entrepreneur Sudhanshu Mittal and Ajay Singh.

The 90-minute presentation began with the initial field research done by the party, the positioning of Vasundhara Raje, relatively new to the state politics, and the fashioning of strategy based on research.

A large number of candidates were chosen on the basis of field research, despite objections of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

For instance, the candidate chosen to oppose Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, an Oswal, Mahendra Singh Jhabak was selected, despite the Sangh's insistence that a Brahmin be fielded against him.

However, on the basis of research, Naidu was shown how, not just did Jhabak's selection succeed in bringing down the BJP's margin of defeat to just 18,000 votes, but also how the decision had a domino effect in all the eight seats that comprise the Jodhpur parliamentary constituency.

Naidu also heard how in Jodhpur city, the selection of Suryakanta Vyas was with a view to splitting the Congress seats.

The BJP's computer told the party that in 58 seats, the strategy was to win simply by splitting the Congress candidates' votes.

Naidu was told that the party won in 23 constituencies, only because it could split the Congress votes.

In Jodhpur, a Muslim candidate took away 10,000 votes that would have gone to the Congress, resulting in the victory of the BJP.

Naidu was reverentially handed the Rajasthan BJP team's "Bhagwatgita"""the graded chart, which listed seats from strong to strategic to weak. The party did concentrated work on 89 seats, which were considered winning seats.

Naidu also listened with concentration to how the party mapped every village in Rajasthan and how this helped in every decision""where to drop pamphlets as a means of campaign, where to use the print media, and where to use local cable networks.

Naidu had some problems of his own that he shared with the team. He conceded that while he had a party organisation that was responsive right up to the booth level, he could not afford the luxury, like the BJP, of a negative campaign. Instead, he said, he anticipated being at the receiving end of such a campaign.