Haridwar: BJP woos Hindus with Modi-for-PM pitch, ignores local issues

Haridwar: Almost a year since the deadly disaster along the hills of Garhwal, the temple town of Haridwar is still coping  with the dip in the number of pilgrims. But the hectic election season activity has somewhat made up for the missing familiar chaos in this Hindu pilgrimage centre. The battle for Haridwar, one of the five constituencies in Uttarakhand, has never been more intense, according to locals. While Narendra Modi has grabbed the imagination of the predominantly Hindu state, Congress Chief Minister Harish Rawat, a clean politician with a good grassroots connection with locals, has put his entire weight behind wife Renuka, turning the battle for Haridwar into a clear BJP Vs Congress one. The BJP has fielded former chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank as its candidate. According to party members, the BJP is going into the election on a platform of religion and the Modi-for-PM pitch. There are three women in the fray, including Renuka. The others are AAP’s Kanchan Chowdhry, a former DG of state police, and Anita Saini of the Samajwadi Party. [caption id=“attachment_150773” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Uttarakhand CM Harish Rawat. PTI[/caption] Though Nishank is a political heavyweight in his own right, the BJP’s campaign in Haridwar has little to do with him. “He is also a former chief minister. But the focal point of our campaign is Narendra Modi,” claims Rajeev Gumbar, the president of BJP’s western UP wing. “There are no local issues that we are talking about, because we don’t have to. The Modi factor itself will appeal to the people of Haridwar,” he adds. The party’s campaign is two-pronged. While the BJP is playing up the achievements of Narendra Modi, right-wing outfits such as the RSS and the VHP have been conducting door-to-door campaigns highlighting the threat to Hindus. According to the district president of the VHP, Surendra Saini, the campaign issues are broadly India’s rising population of Muslims and the country’s relationship with Pakistan. “When the country was given freedom, there were only three crore Muslims but now almost a quarter of the population is Muslim. We are reaching out to every single household in the constituency to expose the politics of appeasement of the minority community by the Congress party,” he says, adding, “The government is trying to initiate a peace process with the neighbours who dismember our soldiers.” According to Saini, in a Hindu majority constituency such as Haridwar, these issues will attract enough voters to see the BJP candidate through. Apart from the political campaigns organised by the party and the Sangh Parivar, the BJP is hopeful that a large chunk of votes will come through the mutts and akharas in Haridwar. “Most of the mutts are supporting the candidature of Narendra Modi, and the ones which are not are affiliated to the Congress,” says Pritpal Kataria, another district level leader of the BJP. According to party sources, the recent attack on Narendra Modi by a local ascetic does not come as a surprise. He is known for his closeness to the Congress party’s central leadership," says a BJP leader in Haridwar, about Acharya Pramod Krishnan, who recently compared Modi with terror outfit Indian Mujahideen. However, these akharas in this pilgrim town are not yet ready to make any open statement supporting Narendra Modi. “Our support will always be with the BJP but we still haven’t formed an opinion on whether to issue a public statement in support of Narendra Modi,” says Mahanta Pranesh, head of Abdhut Mandal, one of the biggest akharas in Haridwar. A member of Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad, Mahanta Pranesh, claims that even though it is justifiable for a Hindu priest to support a  BJP candidate, the mutt did not want to use their popularity in favour of any particular political party. “We are not telling anyone to vote for the BJP but we are saying that people should vote in large numbers for a candidate who will stop killing of cows in the country.” Sources in the Akhara Parishad, though, clarify that the organisation does not want to get into a direct confrontation with the Congress government in the sate. A polarising campaign which avoids local issues entirely and focuses on religion only could backfire on the BJP, say political observers. “They (BJP) are forgetting that the constituency of Haridwar has a big number of Muslim and Dalit voters, who in the absence of a strong BSP or SP candidate will vote for the Congress,” says Ashis Khanduri, a local journalist. There are almost 4.2 lakh Muslim and around 2 lakh Dalit electors in this constituency - together they constitute 35 percent of the total votes. While BJP is busy looking for its Hindu voters, according to Congress sources, their party is all set to secure the minority and Dalit votes. Moreover, with Harish Rawat behind her, Renuka is no pushover. But away from the big fight, the AAP candidate is quietly winning hearts of the urban voters. Kanchan Chowdhry, the first woman DG of police in the country, has impressed voters with her emphasis on local issues. “She is the only one who talks about saving the river Ganga. The rest are all hand in glove with the stone quarrying mafia, the reason for the death of the river,” says Bhanu Saini, a local businessman. Both the Congress and the BJP have overlooked the issue. This might prove costly as life and livelihood of people depend on the river. “If there is no river, then how can business survive?” he adds.