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From asking the party’s Dalit MPs to spend days and nights in Dalit localities of Haryana, to being closeted inside the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) office in Mumbai for days on end to fine-tune the campaign in Maharashtra, party president Amit Shah micro-managed the assembly elections to the hilt.
The results of Maharashtra and Haryana elections will be out on Sunday but the BJP brass only waited till the end of polling to say it was an election the party fought well, and that it was confident of forming governments in both states. The party credited not only the National Democratic Alliance government’s good performance but equally the “tireless and organised election campaign” by lakhs of BJP workers led by Shah.
Senior party leader J P Nadda said people had voted for the credible governance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but equally important was the party campaign. “Lakhs of BJP workers put in their utmost efforts to conduct an organised campaign,” he said.
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The assembly elections were the first big electoral test of Shah after being appointed party president in August. Shah had led the BJP to a spectacular Lok Sabha victory in Uttar Pradesh. But the BJP performed poorly in a series of assembly by-polls, particularly in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, immediately after Shah took over. However, the party leadership was today confident that the results in both Haryana and Maharashtra “would be beyond imagination”.
The BJP was not even chary of admitting that the results would be interpreted as an acid test for its new team of office-bearers. The BJP dropped several senior leaders and brought younger leaders into key leadership positions after Shah was appointed president.
“It is not difficult to accept that the elections are an acid test for the new team of office-bearers since we know the results will be extremely favourable,” said a source. “These battles and victories are not about one man. Efforts of thousands of workers go into making such triumphs possible,” the source added.
The BJP leadership emphasised victories in Maharashtra and Haryana would not mean a weakening of the National Democratic Alliance, which has 23 members after the exit of the Shiv Sena and the Haryana Janhit Congress. The BJP is certain relations with Shiromani Akali Dal will remain cordial, and does not think the Haryana and Maharashtra results will mark the beginning of the end of the ‘coalition era’ in Indian politics. “We have no disputes with the Akali Dal,” a source said.
The party leadership did not wish to comment on the continuation of the Shiv Sena’s Anant Geete in the Modi cabinet. The BJP is also convinced that severing ties with the Shiv Sena and the Haryana Janhit Congress was a principled stand. “We asked from them what was our due, nothing more,” sources said, adding that no one in the government or party had asked Geete to quit. The BJP, its leadership said, would continue to expand its base in areas where it had traditionally been weak.
Nadda said the BJP held 715 public rallies in Maharashtra. It had 89 digital raths which held 9,500 “digital public meetings” across the state. In Haryana, the BJP organised 270 public rallies and 10,000 “digital public meetings” with the help of 90 digital raths.
The party leadership said Haryana was more of a challenge. The BJP had won only four of the 90 seats in state in the 2009 assembly elections. In Haryana, the party focussed on the non-Jat vote. It asked all its Dalit MPs to spend days in Dalit localities. It reached out to Dera Sacha Sauda, which has a substantial Dalit following. Both Modi and Shah spoke about atrocities on Dalits.
The BJP, however, also reached out to Jats, Haryana's dominant community that comprises 27 per cent of the state's population. It fielded as many as 26 Jat candidates, including prominent ones like Captain Abhimanyu.
The party fielded its MP from Faridabad and a minister in the NDA government, Krishan Pal Gujjar, to convince the sizeable Gujjar voters, while with Rao Birender Singh it reached out to equally influential Yadav voters. Haryana leaders like Ram Vilas Sharma and Anil Vij were deployed to win over Brahmins.
"Our campaign was to ask people to rise above caste considerations and vote for development," a BJP leader involved with the Haryana electoral strategy said.
