By Anirudh Singla
Assi Ghats in Varanasi today will be illuminated with colourful flairs of speckled lights, celebrating the resounding success of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Reawakening to the magical result, post the 2014 General Elections, the UP Populace has instilled their trust in Narendra Modi yet again. Winning over 309 seats out of the 403 Assembly seats, vigorous ad campaigns and craftily framed idioms helped saffronize the UP terrain to a large extent.
Did the SP feud spoil the game?
The Yadav family fiasco, along with Samajwadi Partys unsteady affiliations with the Indian National Congress (INC) are some of the several other reasons pitted against the duos abrupt downfall. BJP has seen various paradigms and facades of uncertainty looming over them, before these election results. Having suffered a huge setback in Bihar Elections, people had started questioning the Modi factor. BJP had got a befitting reply to the one-man politics policy, which it put forward with supposed ulterior intentions in Bihar. Seeing the recourse of public dissent towards the demonetization drive and the Union Budget, Party President Amit Shah also had a hard time battling inner bickering of party members and political mudslinging at the outer front.
Micro-Managing party structure dynamics
Politics is a ruthless game. Win or lose, it happens publicly. Building on the experience from past failures and successes, Amit Shah prepared for the Elections by dealing with the groundwork. Post the 2014 General Elections, instead of gloating on the success of BJP, Shah practically outlaid the organisational structure of the Party in order to introduce a modern approach as compared to the relatively old Sangathanist model.
BJP did a exhaustive identification of SP, BSP and Congress bastions followed by intensive scrutiny of the vote-bank these parties held in different regions. Inexplicable micro-management in the booths along with intelligent social media campaigning paid off its worth. Often the candidate, more than his party affiliation, decides the outcome of the seat. Having carefully weighed all their options in retrospective terms, leaders from different castes and communities were handpicked by the main team after credibility checks. During the Election phase, a team of over 500 volunteers was framed, with the sole intention of preventing any possibility of rigging or lawlessness creeping into the polling process.
Emerging out of the Chakravyuh in full glory
The political sphere is currently buzzing with debates about how Shahs tactical understanding beat SPs supposed development model and Mayawatis self-proclaimed caste politics. While the Jat Community in the Western states sulked due to the unresponsiveness of the BJP towards their demand for reservation, this did not affect the party substantially. Their decision to not project a chief ministerial candidate – thus avoiding in-party dissent – and outright Muslim clerical support to the BSP enabled the BJP to emerge as a clear winner.
Now, what remains to be seen is whether the subtle undertones of the Hindutva Ideology portrayed as the hidden agenda of the majority party raises its ugly head and gives rise to religious and communal politics. The partys stand on several topics such as the Ram temple construction and lawlessness in the state will hopefully give a good insight over the political scenario of UP for the next five years.
Featured Image Credits: New Indian Express