Amit Shah may be the game changer for BJP in Uttar Pradesh

Two months ago the Bhartiya Janata Party national president Rajnath Singh had claimed that Ram Mandir is not in the agenda of the party. During the same time, Narendra Modi’s aide Amit Shah took charge in Uttar Pradesh for the Lok Sabha elections.

Shah initiated his new role by visiting Ayodhya, the birth place of Ram. There, after praying for the party’s victory, Shah also made a resolution to build a majestic Ram Mandir.

The argument of this new in-charge of Uttar Pradesh was clear: “If the UPA can indulge in blatant appeasement of Muslims, why should BJP workers and leaders shy from wooing the majority?”

“Muslim appeasement policies of the Congress are indirectly helping us. What Shah meant was that we have to be clear on our agenda and make sure that Mohan’s (a majority person’s ) right is not given to Mahmood (a minority person) and the same message should be carried to the people,” said a senior leader of the BJP.

Since then Shah has been to Gorakhnath temple, where he met Yogi Adityanath and sought blessings of Mahant Avaidyanath. What followed next was a meeting with one of the major architects of Babri Masjid demolition, Kalyan Singh. Shah then inducted the hardcore Hindu icon Varun Gandhi in his team and handed him the responsibility to bring youth to the party folds.

Now the party is waiting to get a date from its fire brand leader Narendra Modi before it can organise its national executive in Vrindavan, the land of Lord Krishna. This will be the launch of BJP’s election campaign. Another rally on social justice is planned this month. In the next four months it is planning to hold ten rallies in Uttar Pradesh.

After 15 years of slump, the BJP appears to be alive and kicking in Uttar Pradesh. It has set an ambitious target of getting at least 40 Parliament seats in the upcoming elections. The target also includes 15 out of 17 reserved constituencies, of which it won only two in the last election.

Until last Lok Sabha elections BJP remained inconspicuous and could gain only 10 seats in 2009 with 18 percent votes. The vote percentage was equal to that of the Congress, although the latter had 21 seats.

The last time the BJP was seen in Uttar Pradesh was in 1998, when it had won 182 parliament seats with 57 members from the state.

This year again, Shah’s entry is being speculated to work as a game changer for the party.

Incidentally, unlike others in charge, Shah is not trying to snatch the limelight from the local state leaders. “I am not here for politics but I have come to strengthen the organisational structure. This is the ‘karmabhumi’ of state leaders and therefore, they should interact with the media”, he has clarified.

This approach has at least minimised opposition towards him and internal conflicts.

His message is clear — “I have come as a soldier to ensure victory for the party and I expect all the workers and leaders to work with similar feelings. Instead of hovering around the senior leaders at the party head office, which would neither get a worker the ticket to Parliament nor will benefit the party in any way, the workers should go to villages and interact with voters”.

The impact of the message was that BJP’s state head office, which used to buzz with workers and leaders, now mostly appears empty. Leaders are constantly on the move. Shah has also evolved a system of reporting back on a set format. Each worker and leader is given a set of questions which they have to answer regarding their stay in villages and interacting with villagers.

According to Shah, “The media has already made the corruption issue reach the common man, now our job is to only convert this anti-incumbency wave into votes”.

The stress is on strengthening the party at the booth level.

“Being out of power for long, BJP over the years had lost its base and the organisational structure had withered”, claims an old faithful.

The party’s national co-convenor Narendra Singh Rana explains, “This is to ensure mass mobilisation. Each booth is to have from 11 to 100 workers with their mobile numbers registered at the head office.”

There are over 1.25 lakh booths and the aim is to erect an army of party workers at the lowest level. It is not only workers, but also leaders who have been directed to get identified by the booths they are working at.

“Booth is the unit where the voter comes and if party workers and leaders are active there, they will know each and every voter and this in turn will help in motivating them to vote for the party,” says party spokesperson Vijay Bahadur Pathak.

Workers in BJP have been told that “the people of the country are looking for a change because they are fed up with the UPA government. In Uttar Pradesh, since Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) are seen as alliances to the Congress, the BJP is the only option”.

According to Pathak, the most important thing is that such changes in the work culture of the party has lifted the moral of BJP workers in the state. “There is clarity in thought as far as issues like Hindutva, corruption and price rise is concerned,” he says.