The BJP’s back room boys
ACTION In the NE states, the managers had to identify the issues on ground and find the best means of communication
Minister for finance, health and education, Assam
ROLE: When former Assam Congress heavyweight, Himanta Biswa Sarma, left the then ruling party and its state government in August 2015 for the BJP, the saffron party’s expansion plan in the northeast got a major fillip. BJP leaders knew they were not just winning over an Assam leader capable of helping the party win power in the largest state in the region, but a resourceful alliance-builder with an extensive network of political contacts in significant local parties across different states. Sarma, 49, holds the important portfolios of health, education and finance in the Sarbananda Sonowal government, but is clearly the face of the BJP in the entire region. The results in Tripura — where Sarma as state in-charge helped the BJP emerge from the position of a non-player to the main challenger to Manik Sarkar’s well entrenched CPI(M) government after he got the entire Tripura unit of the Congress to merge with the BJP — bear witness to Sarma’s efforts. The alliance he helped forge with the IPFT helped the party in the polls.
As it got down to working out the contours of a pre-poll alliance in Nagaland, the BJP leadership had a crisis on hand: representatives of 11 political parties, including two of its own, sided with the civil society groups and Naga Tribal Hohos’ call for putting on hold the assembly poll till a solution to the Naga issue was reached.
Within hours, the BJP back room had put out a statement, announcing the removal of the two party representatives. Through the use of social media platforms and communication aids such as WhatsApp, it simultaneously relayed the message that negotiations to ensure that polling was done on February 27 were underway.
In the three states of Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya, the back room managers had to identify issues on the ground that had a wider resonance as well as find the best means of communication for traction of Minister of state, home affairs
ROLE: As minister of state for home affairs at the Centre, Kiren Rijiju is considered the face of the northeast in the Narendra Modi government. For someone who studied in Delhi for his graduation and then became a lawyer, Rijiju plays the bridge between the capital and his home state, Arunachal Pradesh. As Nagaland in-charge for his party, he pitched for linking the prosperity of the state with peace. Much before Himanta Biswa Sarma joined the BJP, it was Rijiju who had taken it upon himself to help the BJP expand its footprint in the northeast after it won the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
At one point, the Congress even accused him of trying to destabilise “democratically elected” governments in the northeast. In 2009, after he lost as the BJP’s candidate from Arunachal
West, he quit the party to join the Congress. He returned two years later, when Nitin Gadkari took over as the party chief. those issues.
They also had to balance the traditional campaigning methods with the newer forms of canvassing.
In the politically fragile state of Nagaland, where the BJP looks all set to form the government with its allies, the back room warriors had to rely on ingenuity to counter questions about the details of the Nagaland Peace Framework that was signed in August 2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) to end the insurgency in the region.
While Union minister Kiren Rijiju was in charge of the state, the back room was anchored by BJP general secretary Ram Madhav’s aide and India Foundation senior fellow, Priyang Pandey.
From countering accusations of the RSS-BJP combine trying to impose a “Hindutva” agenda in the state to reaching out to various tribes and addressing their specific concerns, supplementing the campaigning on the ground with outreach through social media,Pandeyandhisteamhad their jobs cut out for them.
“We worked according to the plans drafted by the party brass led by the PM and it is heartening to see the hard work of the party members bear fruit,” Pandeysaid. BJP general secretary, and in-charge, northeast
ROLE: A key networker capable of straddling territories that would seem disparate even to politicians with a penchant for alliances, Ram Madhav, 53, was busy driving the youth connect of the BJP’s ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, in 2014. That is when he was sent by the Sangh to work in the party, shortly after it had won the general election with an absolute majority. As the man in charge of the Sangh’s publicity and the head of its key publications, Madhav had repackaged the RSS’s message for young people without diluting its ideological content. He brought in a flexibility (weekend shakhas, online enrolment) aimed at attracting the young. In the BJP,
Madhav’s tech-savvy and modern election management style — which relies on in-depth surveys and big data — has fit in well with the party’s attempt to modernise itself. As the man responsible for forging the alliance with the North
East Democratic Alliance, he has managed to repackage what the party represents in the northeast. As a result, the BJP has increased its electoral footprint. In neighbouring Tripura, where the contest was between the BJP and the incumbent CPI(M), the brief from Modi and party president Amit Shah to Rajat Sethi, who was steering the back room, was to “remove fear”. BJP in-charge, Tripura
ROLE: A former RSS full timer, 52-year old Sunil Deodhar is being credited for anchoring the BJP’s electoral campaign in the Left bastion of Tripura. Deodhar’s poll management skills during the campaign in Varanasi, Prime Minister Modi’s constituency, which he was responsible for during the 2014 general elections, was the reason why party president Amit Shah picked him for the job.
In Tripura, which the BJP won convincingly, Deodhar dovetailed the traditional campaigning style of the RSS-BJP — strengthening the cadre and intensifying outreach through door-to-door campaigns — with the modern canvassing mediums of social media.
In a state that had been ruled by the CPI(M) for a quarter of a century, the BJP projected itself as the alternative that would change the fate of the state and its people.
Sethi, who has worked with Ram Madhav during the Assam and Manipur polls, says the back room only executed the ideas of Modi and Shah.
“Under the guidance of Ram Madhavji and Amit Shahji, we implemented what the PM told us, which was to remove fear from people’s minds.
There were so many violent attacks in the state against people opposing the communist ideology. We had to think of micro strategies to help overcome that fear. In the end, it has been a people’s fight,” Sethi said.
The BJP, which is backed by the widespread network of the RSS, in addition to its own wellstructured cadre, buttresses its election campaigns through the extensive use of social media.
In Meghalaya, where internet penetration is limited, the party’s back room managers had to rely on traditional methods of campaigning and bolster it with the use of WhatsApp to connect with people at the booth level.
In the state in which the BJP in the last assembly poll managed only 1.27% of the votes and lost the deposit in all of the 13 seats that it contested, the focus was local issues.
“WefollowedPMModi’sdevelopment agenda of Sabha Saath, Sabka Vikas (With all, Development for All). We raised the issue of inadequate drinking water supply, poor state of roads and the need to bolster tourism for employment generation,” said Satyendra Tripathi, the organisational secretary in the state.
NEWDELHI: