After the low, BJP on high alert

Party plans rallies, meets until February; PM Modi to be at the centre of the 2019 campaign

MUMBAI: A week before the poll results in the three Hindi heartland states were announced, a senior state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader had indicated that the party was staring at a 3-0 tally in these states and that the party’s high command was aware of possible defeat.

Yet when the results came out, there was a jolt in the BJP’S Maharashtra unit; most legislators were counting on a win in at least two of the three states. The defeat in neighbouring states meant that fight on home turf next year was no longer easy.

“The euphoria that we can’t be defeated has now been punctured. The party top brass will be in an alert mode now, and the election machinery will be activated,” said a BJP legislator from western Maharashtra.

The party leadership has indeed activated organisational machinery, working out a schedule until February next year that includes rallies, meets of all key morchas (fronts) of the party from Yuva morcha to Mahila morcha and OBC morcha.

This was finalised during the discussions held by BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday in a marathon meeting with key organisational leaders across the states to kick off its 2019 poll preparation.

While the meeting with the party president was planned prior to the poll results, after the polls, the message from the top brass was to get more vigilant and work harder, said a leader

present at the Delhi meet.

Maharashtra state president Raosaheb Danve, state organisational secretary Vijay Puranik, Mumbai chief Ashish Shelar and BJP youth wing national president Poonam Mahajan were present at this meet.

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis also met PM Modi and Shah separately in the capital.

“The next elections will revolve around PM Modi and that will be our USP. But we have to be more aggressive in setting the agenda and the electoral narrative. The message to our cadre and workers is to focus on development, work done by party and decisive leadership of the PM. Ram Mandir is not an election issue for us,”

said another senior BJP leader.

He said the party will have to go the extra mile to aggressively take on allegations levelled by the Opposition like Rafale that were based on “lies, but had damaged the party”.

The party will also continue the narrative of comparing their performance to the last 15 years of the Congress-ncp performance in the state to show how they have done better.

The senior leader said the state top brass would also go the extra mile to build support base with scheduled castes and the tribals even as it would shore up support of its support base in the state, the Other Backward Class.

“We have been identifying key community leaders from OBC, Dhangars, Nomadic Tribes, who we can give tickets to. The OBCS have traditionally been with us and they will trust us more than Congress-ncp,” he said.

Fadnavis, who started holding district-level performance reviews of 10 flagship Modi government schemes across the state from October, will complete this exercise to gauge the impact of his government’s initiatives on the people. He is also focusing on drought relief in the state to arrest further disenchantment of farmers.

The party is hoping it can build on the goodwill of the nearly 2 crore direct beneficiaries of these schemes. It also plans to grant drought relief speedily given that 70% of farmers are hit by the calamity. The youth wing of the party will be used to reach out to each of these direct beneficiary families. The Yuva Morcha will also be tasked with reaching out to the first time voters in the state.

However, political analysts feel the BJP will have to bring more to the table than just the Modi factor, hardline Hindutva and election machinery magic to ensure win in 2019.

“There is beginning of a perceptional transformation with these poll results that the BJP can be defeated. To arrest that, the BJP has to offer more than Ram Mandir, Modi wow factor, election machinery to the voters. They need a new and better narrative,” said Prakash Bal, political analyst.