Former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee today publicly ticked off high-profile BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan for running a hi-tech election campaign that failed to enthuse party workers and supporters, well-placed sources said. While analysing the party’s election defeat in his closing remarks to the national executive today, Vajpayee came down heavily against the expensive PR drive—comprising telephone calls to voters, SMS messages, and glossy posters—that was an integral part of the party’s election campaign. Vajpayee, sources said, mentioned Pramod Mahajan by name while criticising the election campaign. He said most Indians did not possess mobile phones and there was no point sending expensive posters through couriers without contacting ordinary party workers. Vajpayee then recalled his first election for the Balrampur Lok Sabha seat back in 1957 when he had only two jeeps at his disposal to cover the entire constituency. But though the Jana Sangh was short of resources, it had no dearth of dedicated party workers, he said, adding ‘‘workers win us elections, not resources.’’ Vajpayee reportedly broke down while recalling those good old days of devoted workers and simple campaigns, and moved many of the delegates to tears as well. Not only did Vajpayee attack the Mahajan campaign model, he obliquely complimented the Congress party’s low-key and ‘aam aadmi’ focussed approach. Without using the words ‘aam aadmi,’ Vajpayee told the party delegates that one major reason the BJP lost the elections was its failure to reach out to the poor. The BJP’s focus on achievements such as telecom and highways made little impact on the vast masses of poor and ordinary Indians who form the bulk of the voters, he said. The party’s failure to take up ‘‘jeevan se aur mitti se judi mudeein (issues relating to the everyday concerns of the people),’’ had affected it badly, Vajpayee said. The party had won the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh precisely because it took up the issues of bijli, sadak, paani, and IT failed in the Lok Sabha polls because it moved away from these basics. Vajpayee also disclosed that he himself had not been taken in by the opinion polls as well as the claims made by party leaders of a BJP victory. Advani had asked him in Lucknow (during the course of his Bharat Uday Yatra) whether the BJP would improve its tally and ‘‘I told him that my feeling was that we would get less seats, not more,’’ Vajpayee said, underlining that all along his gut feeling was that the BJP would do far worse than everyone was expecting. Vajpayee, sources said, also praised the ‘‘impressive’’ analysis of the poll defeat made by Advani and asked party members to study it carefully and draw lessons from it. However, whether this was an endorsement of Advani’s call to focus on the party’s ‘‘ideological constituency’’ was not made explicit. Vajpayee, on his part, did not make any mention of the Sangh Parivar or the party’s core constituency in his speech. Instead, by speaking against the party’s pro-rich image and the need to focus on ‘basic issues,’ Vajpayee reinforced the ‘moderate’ line now associated with his leadership. On the ideological front, he only repeated that he saw no difference between Hindutva and Bharatiyata, sources said.
