In February 2013, the Left Front won 50 of 60 the assembly seats in Tripura. The BJP managed 1.54 per cent vote share—49 of its 50 candidates lost deposits. Yet, Amit Shah says the BJP will rule Tripura after assembly elections early next year.
It could be political bluster, but his party men claim the tide has begun to turn. On a two-day visit last month, Shah revved up party machinery in Tripura. He listened intently to local leaders, took notes, and apportioned work to everyone. He ordered that they harry the Manik Sarkar government with charges of corruption and lack of development, and promise seventh pay commission scales if the BJP is voted to power. The state government employees still draw pay based on the fourth pay commission.
“We will promise to implement it in the first cabinet meeting, and involve them in agitations. If employees cannot participate, their families can. This way we will reach out to 7 or 8 lakh people,” Sunil Deodhar, BJP’s Tripura in-charge told THE WEEK. Tripura has 25 lakh voters.
After Shah’s visit, the BJP agitated for 15 days for the raise. Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be the next visitor to Tripura, to inaugurate a development project and hold a rally. The party has invited its new hindutva poster boy, Yogi Adityanath, to visit the state, as 90 per cent of Other Backward Caste people here belong to his Nath sect. There are 18 Gorakhnath temples here.
Shah is touring all states, to prepare his party for an encore in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He spent two days even in Lakshadweep, which has just one seat. “There he met the state in-charge, district in-charge, mandal in-charge and booth in-charge. They were in the same room. Imagine the kind of boost they get,” a BJP leader said.
Booth management has been Shah’s hallmark. Now he is focusing on 120 Lok Sabha seats, most of them in the south and the north-east. “We were defeated in these seats. The strategy is simple. To strengthen the organisation. To understand the problems of these areas and hold agitations. To bring people closer to us and make them aware of 106 schemes run by the Central government,” Shah told THE WEEK.
Shah is working on his party’s weak states—Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and West Bengal. He has visited them three times each. Now he is on a tour of 110 days with a set template—hold a roadshow, dine at a dalit’s house, celebrate the local icons, meet local leaders, meet intellectuals, and address a press conference. He has already visited Telangana, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat during this tour since April.
Most of the 120 seats are in south India. To win them, the BJP is engaging with regional outfits, championing local issues and claiming opposition space.
“The Dravidian ideology and regionalism are in decline. With Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa fading from the political arena, it is BJP’s turn,” Murlidhar Rao, general secretary and party in-charge for Tamil Nadu, told THE WEEK.
The BJP has strengthened its hold on the different factions of AIADMK. The longevity of the government in Tamil Nadu depends on the BJP’s wishes. Even for superstar Rajnikanth’s new role as a political figure, the BJP would be pulling the strings, it is claimed.
In Telangana, Rao said, the BJP is claiming the vacant opposition space. The Congress is weak; many of its leaders have joined the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi. In Andhra Pradesh, a shift is happening despite the BJP being an ally of the ruling Telugu Desam. “There is no growth [for leaders] in regional parties, which only a national party offers,” Rao said.
In poll-bound Gujarat, new caste leaders like Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mavani and Alpesh Thakor can hurt the BJP, if they support the Congress. Shah begs to differ. “You take any election prediction or coverage before all state elections in Gujarat. It was said we would lose, but results proved otherwise,” he told THE WEEK. Immediately after selecting R.N. Kovind as the candidate for president, Shah went to Gujarat to meet booth workers and open a district office.
In Himachal Pradesh, the BJP is following the Uttar Pradesh template. “We are consolidating our presence. We have started four different yatras from four Lok Sabha constituencies,” Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda, who flagged off one of the yatras, told THE WEEK. The CBI case against Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh can only help the BJP in the elections.
Shah will next visit Odisha, from July 4 to 6, where the party had recently held its national executive meeting. “The PM’s image and our relentless attacks on the Biju Janata Dal are working in our favour,” BJP general secretary in charge of Odisha, Arun Singh, told THE WEEK. The party got 34 per cent of votes in the local body elections a few months ago.
Though Modi continues to be the most prominent brand for the BJP, it is Shah’s military-like precision that works to sustain the wave. To keep the party machinery well oiled, Shah has divided the country into seven zones, where separate coordination meetings are held.
Last year, he asked 12 national leaders to cover three states in four months each. Each Rajya Sabha member of the party was asked to look after a Lok Sabha seat it had lost in 2014. Core groups were set up in all states. They meet every two months and submit a report to him.
Giving an example of his gruelling work style, a leader said, Shah would ask even a booth in-charge about the number of voters in his area. How many votes were cast, and how many were for the BJP? And did the booth in-charge contact voters who did not vote for the BJP? And how many times were they approached? Shah is a taskmaster.
In contrast to Modi’s rhetorical flourishes, Shah does ruthless plain-speaking, be it in interviews or in rallies or to his party members. Many BJP leaders dread it. He does not soften his words with courtesies.
The BJP has changed a lot after the arrival of the Modi-Shah duo. They have focused on building the organisation. The party turned from cadre-based to mass-based, and programmes were launched to keep the members emotionally attached to the ideology. Nine lakh members were trained in the last one year.
Shah’s love for libraries, which he inherited from his grandfather in Mansa, is going strong. At the national executive meeting in Bengaluru in 2015, he announced the building of party offices in all districts, setting up of libraries and e-libraries, and recording of each event conducted by every BJP unit across the country.
To set up offices, land has been bought in 287 of 550 districts where the party didn’t have a permanent office. The target is to have offices in all districts by 2019.
