The BJP is optimistic, less than halfway into the campaign, that Jharkhand has been won. “The momentum we have generated in the first two phases will carry us over the line,” says a member of the campaign team that operates out of the BJP’s state headquarters in Ranchi. This confidence has not come out of the blue. Behind the well-orchestrated rallies and a relentless media campaign, an bee-like army is at work. The party’s election-in-charge, Bhupender Yadav, lives quite literally at the top of this hive, in a room on the third floor of the HQ. He brought in a core team from Rajasthan, his home state, and has structured a campaign whose hallmark has been control over information and resources. For instance, the BJP has installed a GPS device in each campaign vehicle. “Once, I noticed a vehicle was going over 150 kph. I called them and told them they were not supposed to do that. A message has since gone out that we keep track of everything they do,” says the campaign team member. GPS trackers have also allowed the BJP to ration funds better, as vehicles used to inflate the distances travelled. Asked what has characterised the management of the team, he says, “Micromanagement. Efficiency.” The essence is the details, such as an insistence on superior sound systems at PM Narendra Modi’s meetings, or constituency maps in all rooms of the HQ. Then there is uniformity. Almost all star campaigners have been saying the same thing: end a procession of unstable governments by giving the BJP (with its allies) a majority. “When we provide speaking points to our campaigners, we ensure they are so dense that they really have no scope to digress,” says the team member. The state HQ has teams going through every locally distributed newspaper and regional channel, classifying news as positive or negative. When a Hindi daily wrote a series of “negative” reports, the BJP stopped giving it advertisements. The team has also deputed members to monitor FM channels to spot if its space has been given to others, and to complain about it. The BJP had flooded the airwaves ahead of Modi’s November 29 Ranchi rally. In contrast, the Congress aired its first advertisement not until two days after voting on phase-1. Ahead of this phase, the BJP held 78 public meetings including 28 by stars such as Modi, Amit Shah and 11 union ministers; the Congress had two rallies by Rahul Gandhi and one by Sonia Gandhi. For the BJP, a network constantly monitors the chatter on the ground. RSS members have been sent in GPS-tracked cars, one for every constituency. Workers have been asked to call a number at HQ if they cannot get through to local leaders — they can then record a voice message. A rath in every constituency, fitted with screens showing Modi’s speeches, clicks photographs of the crowd at every stop and circulates these with WhatsApp. All this is supplemented by political decisions. The party was encouraged by internal reports on the first phase: it says it will win at least five or six, possibly 10, of the 13 seats. In 2009, it won only three seats in this region, considered an MCC bastion and aligned to the socialist parties. This time, the party overhauled its candidates list, retaining only one of its eight from 2009. “There is no Mission 42+ or 44+. There is only Mission All Seats,” says the team member. Bhupender Yadav insists his party has “involved cadre at the block level, taken their opinion even, and factored in social equations”, but the only mantra for the BJP while selecting candidates has been winnability. The BJP had to replace Latehar candidate Narayan Bhokta after his links with an LWE organisation surfaced, but did not hesitate to field former CPI(Maoist) sub-zonal commander Manoj Nagesiya in Kolebira. The feeling across the state is that the fifth phase, and part of the fourth, could make or break the BJP. These 18 seats are in the Santhal Pargana region, a JMM stronghold. The BJP had won only two in 2009; the JMM had 10. Each party had 18 MLAs in the last assembly. In Santhal Pargana, the BJP has taken an approach radically different since phase-1: it has brought in experienced faces from other parties. “Those who formed the JMM and were part of the Jharkhand movement are with us now. We have Simon Marandi and Hemlal Murmu; we want to tell the people that the baap and the beta are not the sole claimants to the legacy of Jharkhand,” says Bhupender Yadav, referring to how Modi has been describing Shibu and Hemant Soren. The BJP strategy in Santhal Pargana is of polarisation. Party leaders say it is wrong to call it an adivasi-majority region: the JMM has combined the 38 per cent adivasi and the 20 per cent Muslim vote to establish its base. The BJP considers it is time to reap the work the RSS has been doing in the region for 20 years, and is banking on votes en masse from the “dikus” — as adivasis of the region call outsiders. It also hopes to drive a stake into the adivasi-Muslim combine that has worked so well for the JMM, and bring over some adivasis. The party has, however, been dogged by two things — its reluctance to name a CM candidate, and its alliance with the AJSU Party. “All questions on CM will be answered after elections,” Yadav says. And the alliance with the AJSU has isolated both the cadre and the RSS. Yadav says of the alliance, “What we did was to join two parties that want to work together on the politics of development.”
