Though its seat tally fell from 23 to 9, the BJP Strategy is taking heart from the fact that the difference between the NDA and the Opposition’s vote shares is just 0.3 percentage points.
Stung by its poor performance in Maharashtra which saw its tally fall from 23 in 2019 to nine this time, the BJP has decided to undertake a massive outreach plan — “ghar ghar chalo abhiyan (let’s go to every household campaign)” — in a bid to reconnect with voters. This was among the many decisions taken at a meeting of the party’s state leadership held on Friday to conduct an initial review of the election results.
With the Assembly elections scheduled to be held later this year, the BJP has now decided to employ a multi-pronged strategy to course correct and convince voters about the governance track record of both the Central and state governments. Through the campaign, the party plans to reach out to communities such as Dalits, tribals, and Marathas that seemingly drifted away from it during the parliamentary elections.
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In the meeting, senior BJP leaders, including Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis, state BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule, national general secretary Vinod Tawde, and Union Minister Piyush Goyal who is the Mumbai North MP, tried to encourage the cadre and emphasized the need for one-on-one communication with voters.
Sources said Fadnavis, who had offered to quit as Deputy CM taking moral responsibility and to “devote his time to the organization”, pointed out that the difference in vote share between the Mahayuti ruling alliance and the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) bloc was just 0.3 percentage point. “We can easily bridge this gap. Even if we enhance our vote share by 1.5%, we will win the Assembly polls. There is no reason to be on the back foot. We will bounce back,” a source quoted him as saying. The NDA got 43.6% of the votes as against the MVA’s 43.9% vote share.
As a part of its “course correction”, the BJP has decided to constitute a committee headed by former Union Minister Bhagwat Karad to analyze district-wise poll results by considering people’s feedback.
“We have to effectively counter the Opposition’s propaganda by reaching out to people and putting forward our side on the Constitution and the Maratha reservation issue,” Bawankule said. BJP insiders said that the Opposition’s “save the Constitution” narrative struck a chord with the people, especially Dalits, who make up 13.5% of the state’s population. To bring back the Dalit voters who had moved away from the party, BJP workers will connect with the community as a part of the round-the-year events across the state to commemorate 75 years of the Constitution. Republican Party of India (Athawale) chief Ramdas Athawale, a BJP ally, has been roped in to plan the events, according to sources.
“It was during Fadnavis’ tenure as CM (2014-2019) that the Dr B R Ambedkar International Centre in London was established. Apart from this, the ongoing Ambedkar memorial at Indu Mill in Dadar is another milestone with which we will counter the Opposition’s narrative. We will also compile a list of central and state social welfare schemes for Dalit uplift,” said a senior BJP leader.
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Maratha conundrum and agrarian distress
The Maratha conundrum, meanwhile, continues to remain a challenge for the BJP, which has constituted a panel under state minister Chandrakant Patil to ensure that the community, which makes up around 33% of the state’s population, reposes its faith in the party.
For this, Patil suggested that a group of party leaders and MLAs start discussions with Maratha organizations in each district of the state. “The party wants to emphasize the fact the community was granted reservation in 2018 during Fadnavis’ tenure as CM but the Supreme Court scrapped the move as the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government could not legally defend it. Moreover, we also want to emphasize that the Mahayuti government led by Eknath Shinde granted reservation to the community earlier this year,” said a source.
BJP insiders said the party would also point out the benefits of quota for Marathas in education. “We will convince them that our opponents have painted us as anti-Maratha and this needs to be countered through dialogue and discussion,” a BJP leader said.
The BJP, sources said, was also working towards getting its caste arithmetic right by empowering OBC, Dalit, and Maratha leaders across the state.
On the other hand, the party will also look closely at its bastions of Vidarbha, Marathwada, and North Maharashtra, where the unrest of farmers over issues of drop in prices of crops and the failure of the government to provide immediate relief is likely to have massively dented the party’s prospects in the recent polls. “The farmers’ interests are not central to the Centre’s policy-making and this has resulted in massive unrest, which was manifested in the Lok Sabha polls,” said farmer leader Vijay Jawandia,
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