New Delhi: A seemingly worried BJP on Thursday unleashed at least 120 MPs from across the country and 19 Union ministers to woo Delhi voters ahead of the February 7 Assembly elections. Not leaving anything to chance, all the MPs and ministers have been asked by party president Amit Shah to get down to the grassroots level and monitor the door-to-door campaign.
With internal surveys not yet showing “expected results”, tempers are rising in the saffron camp. Some senior Union ministers were reportedly pulled up by the top party leadership for “not being able to concentrate on the given areas”.
With reports also pouring in that CM candidate Kiran Bedi is “not getting the expected response from voters”, the party has quietly put her in the background for the moment. She has also been replaced in posters in many parts of the national capital by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The party appears worried that Ms Bedi’s rallies and meetings are “not drawing a crowd”, a source said.
Reports of dissent among party workers, with some of them refusing to work for Ms Bedi, have also become a major cause of concern. Questions are also being raised in party circles on whether bringing in Ms Bedi was really a “masterstroke” or a “historic blunder”. After persistent reports of dissident activities, the top BJP leadership has taken away the entire campaign exercise from Delhi unit leaders. The main campaign activities will now be run by Union ministers and MPs.
Two rallies to be addressed by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday and Friday were abruptly cancelled for “unavoidable circumstances”. While BJP leaders refused to spell out what these “unavoidable circumstances” were, sources said the rallies had to be “cancelled due to lack of coordination between the Delhi unit and Ms Swaraj’s office”.
With the BJP putting all its eggs in the Delhi basket, the Prime Minister, Mr Modi, is likely to pitch in at the last moment. He is expected to address at least four rallies in the last lap of the campaign. His first rally will be on Saturday at the CBD Ground in East Delhi.
These are, however, not the only issues plaguing the party at this point. The BJP also failed to release its manifesto as there was no consensus among senior leaders on giving Delhi full statehood. Instead, the party is now talking of releasing a “vision document”, but no details are available on what it might contain. Union minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy, when asked about details on Thursday, refused to take questions on the subject, or to spell out what it might say on full statehood for Delhi.
With such problems mounting, Mr Amit Shah has been working virtually around the clock and holding a series of meetings with party leaders and workers to keep the Modi juggernaut rolling. The BJP is aware that any failure to get a simple majority will hit the party hard, and not just in Delhi. Even a hung Assembly, if that transpires, might be “interpreted as a waning of the Modi influence”. For the BJP, this is an election it simply has to win “at any cost”, a senior party leader admitted.
