After being appointed BJP president for the second time on January 24, 2016, Amit Shah told Hindustan Times that his party will have to devise a strategy of “51 per cent politics” to defeat electoral forces. The now Union home minister said six years ago that the central point of politics had shifted from Congress to BJP, and it will be “BJP versus all” or “Narendra Modi versus all” in future akin to “Congress versus all” or “Indira Gandhi versus all” of the past as adversaries will join hands for political survival.
The Gujarat Assembly election result where BJP managed a mammoth first time 52.5 percent vote share even after ruling the state for six consecutive terms is the ambitious mandate that BJP leadership led by charismatic Prime Minister Narendra Modi and workaholic Amit Shah were working for. The electoral result shows how astute politics and hard work by the highly efficient party machinery can be synergized to deliver beyond the “51 per cent” mandate.
While the Congress has won Himachal Pradesh Assembly election and the AAP has won the MCD local elections in Delhi, the BJP vote share in the hill state is just 0.9 per cent below the winning party and the party has added one more per cent vote in the Delhi municipal elections and gave a tough fight to the winner despite carrying anti-incumbency of past 15 years.
The election results clearly indicate that the BJP leadership has not allowed the party to be jaded in Gujarat by infusing fresh political blood, new jobs and state pride linked initiatives while keeping the law and order situation under control. The belief that PM Modi can do nothing wrong for Gujarat backed by well-oiled party machinery has given yet another ruling mandate to the party with an overwhelming vote share.
While the BJP leadership knew that it was facing an uphill task in Himachal Pradesh after the party lost the Mandi Lok Sabha seat and three Assembly seats last November, the party did not let go of the fight till the end in a state that is known to change its rulers after every five years. The central leadership sent national vice president Saudan Singh to Shimla as early as April-May to sharpen the electoral campaigning in the hill state. Despite facing traditional anti-incumbency, the results show that the party did very well in the Mandi segment and just lost by 0.9 per cent vote. The fact is that if the AAP party had put the same effort in Himachal as it had put in Gujarat, it would have cut into anti-BJP votes and the results would have been different.
The electoral wins in Rampur Assembly bye-elections, a bastion of Samajwadi Party’s Azam Khan, and in Kurhani Assembly seat bye-elections in Bihar, where all parties ganged up against the BJP, show that the right-wing conservative party is relentlessly working 24 X 7 and 365 days a year. The fact is that while Amit Shah stayed in Gujarat to lead the party on the ground in the run-up to Gujarat, PM Modi was following a back-breaking schedule by taking a series of meetings in the PMO in Delhi and then addressing rallies all over the state.
Although municipal elections are no match for Assembly or Parliament elections, the BJP pushed all its big guns on ground from party President J P Nadda and senior Cabinet ministers to ensure that the party’s vote share went up by one per cent and stood up to the ruling AAP party with its freebies for its voters.
After winning Gujarat hands down, PM Modi addressed jubilant party workers on Thursday evening where he cautioned against political adversaries and their force multipliers. He also gave the vision of “Developed India” by 2047 to party supporters. This future challenge caters to the aspirational India and throws the political gauntlet at BJP’s adversaries to come up with a better objective for the youth who will vote in 2024.
