The Aryavarth Express
Agency (Ayodhya): Modi ki Guarantee—Ram Lalla Darshan Yojana. The promise, displayed on large hoardings, is what welcomes you to Raipur as you exit airport. Even those who live in the hinterlands of Chattisgarh have been assured of a darshan at the Ram temple in Ayodhya if Prime Minister Narendra Modi becomes the Prime Minister for the third time after the Lok Sabha polls.
Sure enough, the grand new Ram temple has become the focal point of the BJP’s campaign in heartland states—Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Together, these states have 214 of 543 Lok Sabha seats, and Modi hopes they will power him to victory for the third consecutive term. The BJP has, indeed, left no stone unturned to woo South India—the Ram idol in Ayodhya was sculptured in stone by a Mysuru artist—but the party continues to depend heavily on support from the Hindi heartland.
Barring Uttar Pradesh, the BJP-led NDA won almost in all these states in 2019. So the BJP has its task cut out to raise its UP tally while maintaining the high numbers in all other states.
The party won 62 seats in UP in 2019, down from 71 in 2014. Its ally Apna Dal won two seats in 2019. The BSP, which drew a blank in 2014 and won 10 seats in 2019 (in brief a alliance with the Samajwadi party), has become so inactive that even its supporters share the common perception that the party chief Mayawati has yielded to the BJP. With senior BSP leaders having joined other parties, ten seats are up for grabs. The SP, which won only five seats in 2019 is out to regain its lost domain, while the Congress is struggling to look beyond Raebareli, the lone seat won by the party leader Sonia Gandhi. With Sonia having moved to the Rajya Sabha because of her ill health, Rahul Gandhi is finally contesting from Raebareli putting big responsibility on the Congress leader to step up campaign for the Congress in the state.
The guarantees themselves are reiterations of the welfare schemes that Modi has initiated over past ten years. Interestingly, while Modi is tireless in describing similar welfare schemes by his rivals as “rewri batna” (distribution of freebies)”, he does not hesitate to boast about welfare push in the name of “Modi ki guarantee.” The darshan guarantee, specially seems to have already taken the BJP ahead of its rivals in the Hindi belt.
The party has long been trying, overtly and covertly, to polarize voters by shrewdly playing the Hindutva card. Facts have been tweaked or distorted, and incidents blown out of proportion, to achieve desired results. The most glaring example in recent years relates to the beheading of Kanhaiya Lal, a tailor in Udaipur, Rajasthan by two Muslim extremists in June 2022. The Rajasthan Police, under Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, arrested the assailants in just two hours, but the BJP claimed that the arrest was made only after the Union Government handed over the case to the National Investigation Agency. While Gehlot gave a compensation of Rs 50 lakhs to Kanhaiya Lal’s family, and provided jobs for two family members, the BJP created a story that only Rs. Five lakhs was given to Lal’s family, while Rs 50 lakhs was doled to a Muslim who was killed in a road rage in Jaipur.
Such claims, amplified by the media, paid the BJP rich dividends in the Rajasthan assembly polls last year. With the Congress failing to effectively counter the disinformation campaign, the polarization of votes brought down the Gehlot government. (IPA Service)
By Harihar Swarup
