Lucknow: Binti Devi, 68, went to cast her vote in Arjunpur village in Lambhua in Sultanpur on Wednesday. A semi-literate woman, she kept looking for Narendra Modi’s name in the EVM and when she did not find it, she ended up voting for the Congress. In Shivgarh, in Pratapgarh district, an elderly couple returned from the polling booth when they were told that Mr Modi is from BJP.
“Kamal wale chor hai. Humko to Modi ko vote dena tha, ab kisi to nahin denge (Leaders of party with lotus sign are thieves, we wanted to vote for Mr Modi. Now, we won’t vote for anyone),” they said and went home without casting their vote. In Takia Bahadurpur village in Amethi, Rakesh Singh and his family wanted to vote for Mr Modi but did not find his name in the EVM. He asked a polling staff who told him to vote for BJP if he wanted to vote for Modi but Singh and his family thought they were being misled and finally cast their vote for the Congress instead.
Despite the Modi-wave reportedly sweeping across the country, the BJP in Uttar Pradesh has failed to establish connect between the party symbol (lotus) and Mr Modi in the rural interiors and this could be working to the party's disadvantage. Mr Modi’s high degree of visibility on national TV channels is apparently not yielding the desired results in the rural areas where access to direct-to-home services is still very limited and most of the population still depends on Doordarshan.
“People in many villages believe that Mr Modi is someone who can change their lives in a jiffy but very few know that he belongs to the BJP,” said Shafi Qureshi, a journalist from Gonda. The BJP poll campaign this time has been completely Modi-centric but the party forgot to connect Mr Modi’s popularity to the party symbol. It may be recalled that the party had earlier coined the slogan “Vote Atal ko, Vote kamal ko, (Vote for Atal, vote for lotus)” which established a link between Mr Vajpayee and the “kamal”.
This time the campaign focuses on Abki baar, Modi sarkar with absolutely no mention of the party and its symbol. A senior BJP leader admitted that the party had finally realised that votes were being lost because of this and to repair the damage, Mr Modi is now wearing a lotus brooch very prominently in all his public appearances and is also talking about kamal in all his meetings.
