© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The widely held belief in the BJP is that the government chose to have a special session of Parliament — from September 18 to 21 — to pass the women’s reservation Bill without waiting for the Winter Session in December because it wanted to project the passage of the landmark law as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s gift to women voters ahead of crucial Assembly elections set to be held in the next few months.
With ground reports and surveys indicating tough fights in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana, the party wanted to be armed with the landmark legislation to boost its election campaign.
The BJP certainly has reasons to worry about in these states. Be it attendance at ground meetings, leaders quitting the party, or the cohesiveness of the state unit, BJP strategists are flooded with worrying reports from these state units. Incidentally, the same reports indicate that Modi’s popularity and the party’s Lok Sabha poll prospects are still intact.
Take the case of Telangana, a state the BJP focused on since 2020 and made a massive surge in the local elections in Hyderabad that December. To boost workers’ morale and strengthen its ground forces, the party held its national executive in July 2022. But the party has been receiving disappointing reports from the state and a change of guard in the state unit — G Kishan Reddy took over from Bandi Sanjay Kumar in July — according to some helped the party while others said it had worsened the situation. According to a BJP insider, at a meeting of a few party leaders at a farmhouse on the outskirts of Hyderabad last weekend there were signals of scores of leaders seriously contemplating leaving the party to join the Congress, which is fast making a comeback to the forefront of Telangana politics.
While the BJP leadership is mulling over toning down the hostility towards the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) to stop the Congress’s return, any exodus of party functionaries will hurt it. With the Karnataka unit in the doldrums — according to a party leader, the alliance with the Janata Dal (Secular) is an admission that the state unit is not in a position to repeat its 2019 performance when it won 25 of the 28 parliamentary seats — Telangana was the state from where the BJP was expecting gains in the south. The decision to bring in Reddy and Etala Rajendra, known for preparing effective political strategies, has not worked so far.
Instead, “dumping” Bandi on the eve of elections seems to have boomeranged, said a party leader from the state. “Everyone is colossally failing there. Bandi Sanjay had an aggression that kept the BJP’s prospects alive and stopped anyone from considering the Congress as an alternative. But now it is like we had shaken the ground and the Congress appears to be taking advantage,” said a source.
In Rajasthan, the BJP is preparing to face polls under collective leadership. But the idea does not seem to be working as the party is getting reports about thin crowds at meetings and the “failure of the much-hyped Parivartan Yatra”, say insiders.
Former CM Vasundhara Raje is finally out on active campaign but the national leadership’s reluctance to declare her as the face seems to have slowed down its surge. This comes even as Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot marches ahead with popular welfare schemes and a seemingly united Congress is stalling the party from taking advantage of any anti-incumbency factor.
The BJP has yet to pick up momentum in Chhattisgarh but its prospects seem to have improved in Madhya Pradesh owing to a robust organisational network. “The advantage for the BJP is that there is no angry lot, neither against the party nor against the Chief Minister (Shivraj Singh Chouhan of MP). We are going ahead with a good progress report of the government and have a collective leadership at the same time,” said state BJP chief V D Sharma.
BJP leaders believe that Madhya Pradesh is a state where its women-centric welfare schemes and campaign will reap benefits. “We will have meetings till the booth level where the party will mobilise the women workers to campaign on PM Modi’s gift to the women in the country,” Sharma said.
But the party is watchful of the impact that Congress’s push for OBC quota will have on OBCs, who have been a major part of the ruling party’s support base since 2014. This may be why Modi, in his speech in Bhopal on Monday, warned that the Opposition would try to divide “naari shakti (women’s power)”. Even as they said the women’s quota Bill would be one of the legacies of Modi’s time in power, BJP leaders admitted they were not sure about the electoral impact it would have on the coming elections.
