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Sources say that a team of 27 leaders, including union ministers, party office-bearers, and MPs, has been constituted, which will be supervised by union home minister Amit Shah. Each of these leaders has been assigned two assembly constituencies where they will work over and above…Read More
This team had a special meeting with Amit Shah a couple of days ago, and the brainstorming went on for more than four hours. (Representational photo/PTI)
After close to three decades, the Bharatiya Janata Party smells an opportunity in the national capital, which will have elections early next month. The saffron party is putting together all its efforts to unseat the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi. With the motto of ending “aapda” (crisis) rule in the capital, the saffron party has adopted an all-hands-on-deck approach.
Not only are campaigns being carried out by BJP candidates and leaders, especially from Delhi, but the party has a more deep-rooted strategy.
Sources say that a team of 27 leaders has been constituted, which will be supervised by union home minister Amit Shah. Given his political acumen and proven track record as an organisation person, the saffron party is hopeful that this team will deliver the goods.
This team, which consists of union ministers, party office-bearers, and members of Parliament, has been given a very specific assignment. The 27 include union ministers like Mansukh Mandaviya, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, and Bhupender Yadav. BJP general secretaries Vinod Tawde and Sunil Bansal are also in it. Several MPs, including Vivek Thakur, Surendra Nagar, Arvind Dharmapuri, Biplab Deb, etc, are part of this panel.
This team had a special meeting with Amit Shah a couple of days ago, and the brainstorming went on for more than four hours.
The saffron party is extremely confident that its strategy of strengthening the booths will make all the difference in the upcoming elections. “We will be focusing on every booth across the capital. Since we have been able to win all the seats in Delhi in the Lok Sabha polls three times, a detailed study will be done on why the party is not able to convert the results of these booths in the assembly elections,” a source aware of the developments told CNN-News18.
Each of these leaders has been assigned two assembly constituencies where they will work over and above the task that has been handed to party leaders, star campaigners, and candidates themselves.
“The job will be to ensure that the gap in the voters who voted for the BJP is closed in favour of the saffron party. There is no need for us to start campaigning aggressively or start delivering lectures or speeches. We will purely be doing much-needed work behind the scenes in each constituency,” another source told CNN-News18. “Delhi is a confluence of many regions and cultures, and therefore, with the kind of bandwidth that the BJP has, we can bring in leaders from all parts of the country to come in for the management of elections. This is going to be extremely important since this will be an election for the BJP to win and AAP to lose.”
There are multiple things that a party or a candidate needs to focus on during elections, which takes away a lot of time from the contestant and the supporting personnel around him. This task will be outsourced to the 27 BJP members who will be in charge of the polls.
“Realistically speaking, there are 51 seats that the party has identified that are viable and where there is a close contest between the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party or the Congress and BJP. Therefore, if the BJP is able to win these 51 seats, then the battle is pretty much over for the opposition,” a source said.
With less than two weeks to go for the high-profile elections in the national capital, this team of 27 will act as backroom boys to aid the candidates and the party in these constituencies. “The biggest advantage of having political leaders do the back-end work in a man-to-man marking situation remains that a political leader can be quick enough to find a political solution to an issue and can communicate effectively not just to the party leaders but also to the public concerned,” a source said.
This team of 27 will report to Amit Shah and BJP national president JP Nadda directly on every issue of concern and also give them updates on the campaign, the way it is progressing on the ground, and whether the message that the saffron party is trying to send through its initiatives, announcements in the manifesto, and the concerns of the public reaches where they need to.
Apart from the candidates and the local leaders, including members of Parliament from the national capital, the saffron party has deployed the services of 40 star campaigners for the Delhi election. Leading them is Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is expected to do at least three rallies in the run-up to the Delhi polls. BJP national president JP Nadda will begin the campaign for Delhi on Thursday. Several chief ministers of BJP-ruled states, such as Pushkar Singh Dhami, Himanta Biswa Sarma, and Devendra Fadnavis, are part of the star campaigners’ list. One of the most popular names is that of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who is expected to hold 14 public meetings in the run-up to the elections.
While the BJP is contesting on 68 out of Delhi’s 70 assembly seats, it has given one seat each to its alliance partners, Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and the LJP (Ram Vilas) party led by union minister Chirag Paswan. Another alliance partner of the BJP in the NDA—Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena—despite having prepared to contest at least 15 seats, has chosen not to put out any candidates. In fact, in a letter, the party has confirmed its unconditional support for the BJP candidates. Observers say this is also a big win for the NDA in comparison to the kind of bickering that has been seen in the opposition parties.
The saffron party will also be deploying the services of allies for campaigning in the Delhi elections. Dates have already been sought from the likes of Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his deputy Pawan Kalyan, as well as Maharashtra deputy CM Eknath Shinde, among others.
Key leaders will be visiting the national capital after the Republic Day celebrations, when the campaigning will be at its peak.
“Saam, daam, danda, bhed approach needs to be put into practice. That’s the clear-cut message and mantra coming in from union home minister Amit Shah, who is known as the Chanakya of modern-day politics and someone who does not mince words at all,” a source said.
The national capital has been a jinx for the saffron party, which could form the government here way back in 1993, the only time it came to power. The BJP has now seen a huge resurgence ever since it tasted victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. But AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal has been the chief minister of Delhi three times. In the wake of recent corruption allegations against him, for which he went to jail, AAP has made Atishi the CM of Delhi on an interim basis. If voted back to power, the return of Kejriwal to the chair of the chief minister seems like a certainty.
Delhi will see polling on February 5 to elect MLAs to 70 constituencies, with the votes to be counted on February 8.
