Independence Day Special: After capturing the imagination of the middle-class, BJP aims to be the first national choice

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah during the BJP National Council meeting at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Delhi. Pic: Pankaj NangiaThe choice of venue for the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national council meeting-the weightlifting auditorium of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi-on August 9 was deliberate. Besides the fact that the council would have more than 2,000 delegates the auditorium could accommodate, newly appointed president Amit Shah wanted to send out the message that partymen need to borrow a trait from weightlifters.Like machines, weightlifters lift weights far in excess of their own body weight, he told fellow BJP leaders in private conversations. In their speeches, party leaders, from patriarch L.K. Advani to RSS appointee to the BJP, general secretary (organisation) Ram Lal, alluded to Shah's message: the BJP needs to keep punching above its weight. In its new avatar under the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah combine, the BJP is turning into a mean vote-catching machine, drawing up plans to replace the Congress as the country's new national choice.The shiftThe party which won 282 seats in the General Elections is a complete break from what was once Advani's BJP. It had contested the 2009 elections half-heartedly with Advani as its prime ministerial candidate. It was a party led by a coterie, infested with infighting and comprising leaders whose individual egos were larger than their combined vote base. The result was that the BJP not only lost the electoral contest once again to the Congress-led coalition, its tally fell from 138 to 116 in five years. Political pundits foresaw the slow death of a BJP incapable of challenging the Congress, and not without reason.But with Modi's third consecutive election victory in Gujarat in 2012, the defeatist BJP began to acquire a new, aggressive hue. As Modi lunged for Delhi, the state units which were performing repeatedly well- Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Rajasthan-began questioning the Delhi coterie and demanding their share in running the affairs of the party. On the other hand, the orchestrated groundswell of support for declaring Modi as prime ministerial candidate reached its peak by the summer of 2013, with both the RSS and emerging new leadership of the BJP throwing its weight behind him and marginalising his detractors. The party snapped its umbilical cord with a sulking Advani when he skipped the Goa national executive meeting in an apparent bid to stall Modi's elevation. Instead, egged on by the then party president Rajnath Singh and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, the party brass declared Modi as the chief of the party's campaign committee.In 2009, the RSS and the BJP had grudgingly allowed Advani to be pitched for the PM's post. In a single move, the party ushered in not just a generational change but a shift in attitudes. Before Modi was finally declared the PM candidate, Shah had already been appointed in-charge of Uttar Pradesh and sent off to the electorally allimportant state, where the BJP's Lok Sabha tally was a mere 10 of 80..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}The governance pitchThe campaign that followed not only won a majority for the party in the Lok Sabha but even allowed the BJP to better its tally in the states that went to the polls in November 2013. While the Congress in Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh paid for the anti-incumbency against the Centre, the BJP bettered its tally. Jaitley, who had long batted for Modi, would predict in private conversations that the 2014 campaign would stand out for its emotional appeal and presidential style. This was even before Modi had been elevated. The 'Modi for PM' campaign that pitched the Gujarat model of development against the UPA's policy paralysis got a shot in the arm with two other BJP chief ministers-Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh- getting a third term. The victory pitched the BJP as a party most capable of governing the country.The BJP under Modi changed the way it fought elections, in the process changing the way Indian elections will be fought in the future. Apart from a high decibel pitch, Modi's team combined the critical mass and Hindutva message of the RSS cadres with a US-style presidential campaign. For the first time after the post-emergency election of 1977, the RSS and its affiliates came out in open support of the BJP's bid for power. Modi's campaign wedded a technology-led campaign by his own team of foreign-educated techies and volunteers of Citizens for Accountable Governance on one side and grassroot RSS workers on the other. The result: the party made unexpected gains in several territories; besides winning 282 seats, it finished second in 54.Looking aheadThe party's immediate concern is winning Assembly elections scheduled for the end of this year. In Haryana, the BJP led in 52 of the 72 Assembly segments where it contested and won seven Lok Sabha seats. In Maharashtra, the BJPShiv Sena combine won 41 of the 48 seats. In Jammu and Kashmir, the party won three of the six seats and polled 32 per cent of the votes, surpassing the Congress, Peoples Democratic Party and National Conference. "Modi's campaign created awareness that the BJP can be a viable alternative to UPA and we need to build on that," says a BJP strategist, explaining the party's hurry to consolidate its gains.Shah's address to party delegates on August 9 stressed on the BJP's expansion. The party wants to form governments in Delhi and Jharkhand, win states like Maharashtra and Haryana as the dominant alliance partner, and most importantly, become the first alternative to regional parties in states such as West Bengal, Odisha and Tamil Nadu. In these new states, it found a foothold for the first time in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The party is even working hard on dislodging the Samajwadi Party (SP) government in Uttar Pradesh. It is a charge SP leaders have repeated ad nauseum and not without reason. Most communal flare-ups in the state have been concentrated in areas where by-elections are scheduled in the coming days. In their defence, BJP leaders say they are waiting for the SP government to collapse under the weight of its own deeds.There are other new territories that the BJP is looking at: Kerala, where it got 11 per cent votes this time, and Jammu and Kashmir, where it has launched 'Mission 44+' to win a majority in the 87-member state Assembly, featured in Shah's presidential address to the National Council. The BJP's plan is to capture power by showcasing the achievements of the Modi Government so that its vote base goes beyond the Hindutva core the RSS wants it to target.As party general secretary, Shah succeeded in bringing together RSS and BJP cadres in UP and converting the support for the party into votes. But as president, he does not want the BJP to depend on the RSS alone. Modi's BJP, led by Shah as the chief executor, wants to eventually occupy the mind space the RSS represents without abandoning the governance model that captured the imagination of the middle-class. Follow the writer on Twitter @jatingandhiTo read more, get your copy of India Today here.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Aug 15, 2014--- ENDS ---

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Independence Day Special: After capturing the imagination of the middle-class, BJP aims to be the first national choice

After capturing the imagination of the middle-class and securing the Hindutva base, BJP aims to be the first national choice.

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