Mumbai: There can be no two things about the victory of the BJP in Maharashtra It was Narendra Modi’s victory; he and he alone was responsible for the party in the state getting an unprecedented 123 seats and bringing it to power in the state.
There may be some who say that since the Prime Minister himself held 23 meetings in the state, the fact that the party did not get even a simple majority takes away some of the sheen from Modi's image.
But this is a facetious comment because he was able to bring the party to victory even without a proper organisation in several areas of the state. Had he not had these whirlwind, whistle stop hops around the state, it is possible that the BJP may not have got more seats than the Shiv Sena.
The Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray was aware of this, and that’s why he went out of his way to criticise Mr Modi's election meetings in the state. He even said there was no Modi wave in the state that could take the BJP to victory without Mr Modi’s personal intervention. He was dot on the reality.
Uddhav realised that Mr Modi's presence would work to the disadvantage of the Sena as they had no one of the stature of Mr Modi to lead the party.
That the BJP state leaders were depending solely on Mr Modi as most of them were confused after the split of their alliance with the Sena, was the fact that they barely campaigned in their constituencies.
For instance in Mumbai, voters who wanted to vote for the BJP didn't even know the name of the candidate in the area. In Colaba for instance, many were not even aware till the time of voting that Raj Purohit was the candidate from the area.
The situation is very much reminiscent of the time when India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress were at the height of their popularity and it was said that even a lamppost, if it stood on a Congress ticket, would get elected.
Whether the BJP victory was that of Mr Modi or the BJP as a party may sound like nitpicking or irrelevant, but it is important to benchmark this in the interest of the future of the party.
If the party is to sincerely implement the promises and assurances that Mr Modi gave to the Maharashtra electorate, the party will have to have a strong organisational base. It has to put its cadre in shape so that it can remain in touch with the people right down to the district and panchayat levels.
Since the party had been in an alliance with the Shiv Sena for 25 years, there was an unspoken division of the areas that the two parties had their strongholds.
The BJP will have to strengthen its organisation in the areas where the Shiv Sena dominates in case there is no rapprochement between the two one-time allies.
