Less of Modi, more of local netas

From the tested trick of pushing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the face of every provincial election so far, the BJP reversed its election strategy in the just-concluded Assembly polls to a completely localised campaign in Assam, and adopted a “bottoms-up” approach in Kerala and West Bengal to establish itself as a truly national party.

As party president Amit Shah happily concluded late on Thursday afternoon, the BJP now has an effective presence in hitherto unchartered territory — the southern and the eastern States.

“Our workers and organisation leaders have strengthened the BJP’s foundations from Kerala to Kashmir and from Kachch to Kamrup,” said Shah.

He further pointed out that the BJP has increased its vote share two-and-a-half times in West Bengal and three times in Kerala since the last elections.

While a strong RSS organisation with years of field work delivered the BJP its first seat and a vote share of 10.6 per cent in the Kerala Assembly, and the party managed to win three seats in West Bengal, it was in Assam that its energy was mainly concentrated.

In West Bengal, in fact, the BJP has registered a drop of seven percentage points at 10.2 per cent since the Lok Sabha elections when it had won three seats with a vote share of about 17 per cent.

Shah was particularly chuffed with the victory in Assam which has three points of departures from how he strategised for the Bihar Assembly election.

The first is the projection of a chief ministerial candidate in Sarbananda Sonowal as opposed to Bihar.

The second was the almost complete reliance on Himanta Biswa Sarma, the local campaign manager, to mould the campaign as he wished. And the third was a resistance to “over-projection” of Modi as the star campaigner.

Modi did campaign in Assam but to a much lesser degree than the earlier Assembly polls, in Bihar, Delhi and Maharashtra. In fact, in an interview to BusinessLine during the campaign in Assam, Biswa Sarma did talk about how much Modi’s popularity was being harnessed in the State.

“The PM addresses rallies as per the requirement of the State party. This is a very local election. We need the blessings of the PM and he has addressed six meetings already and he is going to address four more. Ten meetings by the PM is not a small number. Bihar is a huge State where he had to four-five times. Assam, being a comparatively smaller State, he has come twice. It’s not more or less. It is relative and what is required,” he had said.

The BJP had clearly learnt from its “Bihari-versus-Bahri (Bihari-versus-the Outsider)” mistake in Bihar and shifted strategy in Assam, a critical State where it had a fighting chance to win.

The ruling party is clearly still a national force in ascendance which is willing to learn and accommodate with new political realities, a trait that its main rival — the Congress — has so far not adopted to its detriment.