Riding Modi wave, BJP may take four
5 Dec 2013 5:59 AM IST
The Gujarat chief minister, over the years, has lived with the tag of being a poor campaigner outside his home state and his rallying skills were put to test for the first time after his anointment as the party’s prime ministerial candidate.
The elections in the four states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi ended on Wednesday with voting in the national capital. Keeping with the trend of high voter turnout in the other states, Delhi too broke the record of the previous highest turnout of 61 per cent in 1993. At the time of going to press, Delhi had recorded over 66 per cent votes and polling was on much beyond the closing hour as the election commission decided to allow all voters who were inside the polling booth at 5 pm to cast their mandate.
Modi’s influence on the party campaign was most prominent in the Capital, where the BJP has been rudderless since its loss in the last assembly polls. It was at the Gujarat chief minister’s insistence that the party decided to appoint former Delhi health minister Harshvardhan as its chief ministerial candidate in the Capital. All through the campaign and especially in the advertisements released in the newspapers on Wednesday morning, Modi made it very clear that he associated closely with the ENT surgeon.
While the BJP has been running governments successfully in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and swapping seat with the Congress in Rajasthan assembly, in Delhi it had been out of reckoning for a very long time. Ridden with faction fights and personal ambitions, Delhi has been witnessing a slow decimation of its cadre strength in the past decade and half. If the BJP, as the majority of opinion polls are predicting, manages to cross the halfway mark with comfortable lead, a substantial credit would be due to Modi for creating the right team.
It’s to the Gujarat chief minister’s credit that he also managed to convince his counterparts in Madhya Pradesh (Shivraj Singh Chouhan) and Chhattisgarh (Raman Singh) and a high-profile party leader Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan to accept him as the star campaigner for the party in their respective fiefdoms. Before his elevation as the PM candidate, Modi was often compared with Chouhan for shouldering the responsibility.
A victory in these polls, would certainly remove the last vestige of doubt that anybody would be harbouring about the command and skippering of the party campaign during the 2014 general election.
The elections in the four states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi ended on Wednesday with voting in the national capital. Keeping with the trend of high voter turnout in the other states, Delhi too broke the record of the previous highest turnout of 61 per cent in 1993. At the time of going to press, Delhi had recorded over 66 per cent votes and polling was on much beyond the closing hour as the election commission decided to allow all voters who were inside the polling booth at 5 pm to cast their mandate.
Modi’s influence on the party campaign was most prominent in the Capital, where the BJP has been rudderless since its loss in the last assembly polls. It was at the Gujarat chief minister’s insistence that the party decided to appoint former Delhi health minister Harshvardhan as its chief ministerial candidate in the Capital. All through the campaign and especially in the advertisements released in the newspapers on Wednesday morning, Modi made it very clear that he associated closely with the ENT surgeon.
While the BJP has been running governments successfully in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and swapping seat with the Congress in Rajasthan assembly, in Delhi it had been out of reckoning for a very long time. Ridden with faction fights and personal ambitions, Delhi has been witnessing a slow decimation of its cadre strength in the past decade and half. If the BJP, as the majority of opinion polls are predicting, manages to cross the halfway mark with comfortable lead, a substantial credit would be due to Modi for creating the right team.
It’s to the Gujarat chief minister’s credit that he also managed to convince his counterparts in Madhya Pradesh (Shivraj Singh Chouhan) and Chhattisgarh (Raman Singh) and a high-profile party leader Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan to accept him as the star campaigner for the party in their respective fiefdoms. Before his elevation as the PM candidate, Modi was often compared with Chouhan for shouldering the responsibility.
A victory in these polls, would certainly remove the last vestige of doubt that anybody would be harbouring about the command and skippering of the party campaign during the 2014 general election.
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