SUSHMASTARS IN SHIVRAJ CAMPAIGN
BJP’S ‘Mission 29’ campaign to sweep Madhya Pradesh pays little attention to Narendra Modi
Aband of workers stands in the scorching mid-day sun, dust hanging heavy in the air, as Leader of Opposition in the 15th Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj’s white SUV rumbles in at the Raisen district returning officer’s premises on April 4. A moment later, the cavalcade carrying Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his wife Sadhna arrives.
Escorted by the Chouhans, it takes barely 15 minutes for a beaming Swaraj, wearing a crisp cotton sari and a black Nehru jacket, to emerge after filing her nomination, and rush to a Durga temple in nearby Vidisha. The priest there bestows a blessing that is probably music to her ears: “Pradhan Mantri bhavah (May you become the prime minister).” Swaraj, whom Bal Thackeray, the late Shiva Sena supremo, had once picked as his choice for prime minister, bows in happy acceptance.
Does BJP in Madhya Pradesh seriously hope to have Vidisha, the constituency Atal Bihari Vajpayee won from to become the prime minister, project another possible contender for the top job this poll? “We don’t need to project any individual here, just the party and its symbol,” claims Vidisha’s district BJP President Toran Singh Dangi, at his office in a cramped corner of
the dusty little town, heart of the Vidisha Lok Sabha constituency that straddles four Madhya Pradesh districts.
Dangi, who coordinates Swaraj’s election campaign here, is explaining why his party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s name has not figured in the many campaign meetings for ground-level party workers Swaraj chaired in her constituency. Not surprisingly, Vidisha’s dusty street sides and narrow alleys are replete with posters and hoardings that mark a sharp departure from the BJP’s Modiheavy national campaign. Near a couple of BJP’s national posters announcing ‘Ab Ki Baar Modi Sarkar’, a large hoarding evidently put up by the local party screams ‘Desh Ki Neta Kaisa Ho, Sushma Swaraj Jaisa Ho’. Turn another corner and Chouhan and Modi share equal space on hoardings proclaiming ‘Desh Mein Modi, Pradesh Mein Shivraj’. Elsewhere in the town,
SUSHMA SWARAJ (LEFT) AND SHIVRAJ SINGH CHOUHAN AT A PUBLIC MEETING IN VIDISHA
Chouhan and Swaraj share space on dozens of hoardings erected during last year’s Assembly elections. Local BJP leaders have evidently found no need to remove those.
The only time Modi finds a mention in Swaraj’s numerous speeches to party workers throughout last month is on March 24 at Raisen. Even in that speech, she mostly lauds Chouhan: “BJP has a capable prime ministerial candidate in Narendra Modi, and a great leader in Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh. Chouhan’s efficient leadership, his sensitivity to people’s problems and his many welfare schemes, combined with the popular anger against UPA’s misrule, will get us a big victory this election in MP.”
She does not mention Modi in her first-ever election rally at Raisen on April 4 either, though Chouhan, who also speaks there, makes the concession of at least a passing reference towards the end of his speech: “Hum logon ne pradhan mantra pad ke liye Narendra Modi ko chun liya hai (We have chosen Narendra Modi as our prime ministerial candidate).”
Swaraj, clearly, is not just another VIP candidate in the fray for MP’s BJP, which, a state leader rues, is being “uncharitably” referred to as the “Madhya Pradesh Morcha” in a section of the national leadership, insinuating a power bloc. With L.K. Advani’s bid to shift his base to Bhopal coming a cropper, Swaraj is now being looked up to all the more. At the party workers’ meetings in Badi and Obedullaganj, state Minister for Tourism Surendra Patwa twice prophesied that Swaraj is going to be the deputy prime minister in the next government. She did not object to that, though her party’s national leadership hauled up Patwa soon after. “All that I really meant was that Vidisha had earlier churned out many winners who made it big, from Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Chouhan,” Patwa tells INDIA TODAY.
Swaraj has been harping on her “Mission 29”, the push to sweep all of Madhya Pradesh’s 29 Lok Sabha seats. The state BJP leadership maintains this is in complete sync with Modi’s “Mission 272+”, yet the RSS is
VIDISHA’S STREETS ARE REPLETE WITH HOARDINGS THAT MARKA SHARP DEPARTURE FROM BJP’S MODI-FOCUSED NATIONAL CAMPAIGN.
evidently not comfortable. “BJP has a defined national agenda for the campaign, and it pivots entirely on Narendra Modi. There cannot be deviations at the local level for any reason,” an RSS leader in Bhopal says, adding “things are being looked into”.
A senior BJP leader admits there has been “a bit of trust deficit” between the party and RSS in the state, especially after Advani was made to quietly settle for Gandhinagar as his Lok Sabha seat: “It was not just to avert broadcasting Advani’s differences with Modi that he was made to stick to Gandhinagar, but more because RSS felt letting him contest from Bhopal could turn the AdvaniSwaraj-Chouhan axis into a more insidious power bloc. Both Swaraj and Chouhan are Advani proteges.” However, BJP’s state spokesman Hitesh Bajpai maintains it is “just a theory, a hypothesis”.
“Sushma certainly wants the country’s top job,” says a senior BJP leader who had been its MLA and MP for decades, besides being one of the founders of the erstwhile Jana Sangh in the state. He says Chouhan, who remains a successful state leader, relies heavily on Swaraj for some space in the national scene. “Swaraj has not been meddling in the state government’s functioning, but has a huge sway over the party in MP,” he adds.
Celebrations had broken out and posters and hoardings hailing Advani sprung up overnight across Bhopal soon after he said he wanted to contest from there in mid-March. But sources say RSS stepped in soon enough and got the BJP leadership to pull those down in quick time. Narendra Jain, RSS’s prachar pramukh for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, however claims, “I don’t even know about it.” Alok Sharma, Bhopal district president of BJP, says the party has already deputed a two-member probe team to identify those who put up those hoardings and posters, though he refuses to confirm if it was on RSS’s directions. Sources
say RSS has been keeping a hawk eye on Madhya Pradesh ever since Advani first described Chouhan in June last year as a bigger achiever compared to Modi. Mohan Bhagwat, its sarsanghchalak, had sat with state BJP leaders including Chouhan in Bhopal during his four-day stay from February 19, dissecting campaign plans and strategies. Though RSS officially does not get involved in election campaigns nationally, sources say the RSS chief had asked his organisation in Madhya Pradesh to get active and even man the polling booths across the state this time.
BJP sources say the plan to “invite” Advani to Bhopal was hanging fire for several months, much before the octogenarian leader had aired his wish. Kailash Joshi, the 85-year-old sitting MP and former state chief minister, too, was kept in the loop to avoid an embarrassing repeat of 2009 when he refused to vacate his seat for Swaraj. The state BJP had kept the Bhopal seat blank when it sent the candidates’ list to Ashoka Road for clearance in early March. On March 9, Joshi announced he was not contesting, a day after Chouhan and state BJP chief Narendra Tomar called on him. Joshi now claims his decision was a personal one. “After I announced my decision, I rang up Advaniji and invited him to contest from Bhopal. He said he will consider it.”
RSS sources say the organisation, in a bid to ensure that the turbulence in Madhya Pradesh does not overshadow the Modi brand, has “gently suggested” to both Chouhan and Swaraj camps to keep off the national media glare so that Modi remains in focus. BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, anyhow, is pushing ahead with his campaign rallies in the state. He has already addressed six meetings, and is likely to speak at 10 more, according to the state BJP leadership.
Chouhan’s aides told INDIA TODAY that he will not talk to any national media until after the polls. Rakesh Srivastava, the state’s public relations commissioner, says this is a “policy decision” Chouhan has taken. “His priority is Narendra Modi getting pre-eminence in all national media coverage.” In Vidisha, Rajendra Sikka, Swaraj’s additional private secretary, also says she has decided not to talk to the national media. Swaraj cancelled her two media briefings, the only ones so far, slated for March 27 and 28.
Can silence be the antidote BJP needs in Madhya Pradesh?