BJP Massacres, Delhi Votes Out Modi, Amit Shah

NEW DELHI: The people of Delhi have not just rejected, but have humiliated the Bharatiya Janata Party reducing it to a level that it has not seen in Delhi since 1998. In just nine months of muscle flexing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Man Friday and BJP President Amit Shah have been shown the door by Delhi, that is home to the central government, through an affirmative vote for the Aam Aadmi Party.

The BJP campaign for the Delhi elections showcased PM Modi all the way. He was the star campaigner pushed in position by his protegee Amit Shah who strategised the meetings, the campaign and of course the candidates. The Prime Minister addressed four mega rallies towards the end of the campaign across Delhi, carpet bombing tactics that had worked in the Lok Sabha elections particularly. No other leaders were visible in the campaign, nor were the candidates for that matter, with every inch of available space in the national capital carrying larger than life hoardings of PM Modi urging people to vote for him in Delhi.

Crores of rupees were spent on just issuing full page advertisements in all the newspapers of the city, that had the opposition filing complaints with the Election Commission. More so as, on polling day, every single newspaper had the Prime Ministers portrait smiling at the readers, a clear attempt to influence the vote. Modi called for the votes in his name, even though in the meetings his chief minister candidate Kiran Bedi was by his side with folded hands, seeking his permission for almost every word she said. She did not present a very dignified figure, a former top rank police officer, hanging on to his words in what many found to be a ‘grovelling’ attitude.

Amit Shah who seems to be running foul of all was particularly abrasive when it came to Delhi. Fired by his success in the Lok Sabha polls, and with PM Modi behind his every move, Shah brushed aside the local party to set up his own parallel state BJP leaders because of his arrogance and insistence on building parallel party structures but found that these tactics fell flat, along with him, in Delhi. The decision to bring in former cop Kiran Bedi as the party’s chief minister candidate midway through the campaign alienated the entire party. And Shah should have seen the writing on the wall when the Delhi leaders----unlike in states like Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra---gave vent to their anger with loud and violent protests. The local leaders went indoors, and did not work for the party in their respective constituencies.

PM Modi and Shah, with little to no understanding of Delhi and its peculiar dynamics, continued with the iron fist and brought in RSS cadres and central ministers belonging essentially to other states to run the campaign. Needless to say the campaign collapsed as did the election, with the BJP slumping to a low single digit figure.What was interesting to note was that no major leader emerged to defend the Prime Minister or Shah-both the face of the Delhi elections. Even Bedi’s comment that if the party won it was the collective gain of all, and if it lost, it was her responsibility, failed to take the spotlights off the duo who have not been hesitant at all in grabbing the centre stage when it suits them. PM Modi’s effort through the campaign to link the Delhi elections with India and vice versa insofar as support for him was concerned failed to enthuse the Delhi electorate that refused to be mesmerised or, as some put, it Modi-fied.

Instead even its core middle class constituency, and the Punjabi, and Bania voters shifted from the party to AAP. The Jats on the outskirts of Delhi who had consolidated behind the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls went to AAP, that carried out an excellent campaign against the Land Acquisition Bill that has become a sore point with the rural community.

Shah was unable to consolidate voters in the national capital along religious or caste lines. The Trilokpuri violence did not work in the BJPs favour as AAP eventually moved in with a healing touch, talking economy and peace and harmony. Similarly Bawana too voted against the BJP despite simmering communal tensions that were intended to polarise the voter but did not.

The youth in Delhi, that had voted in droves for the BJP in the Parliamentary elections, turned against the party this time because of its regressive campaigns on Love Jihad, Ghar Wapsi and more recently Valentines Day. The effort by the Sangh affiliates to challenge progress and modernity with primitive responses certainly did not endear this ideology to the youth.

The Delhi election as The Citizen has been writing for several days now was a class election, and not based on caste or religious lines. The poor set the trend by making up their minds in favour of AAP over two weeks ago. The rest followed and by the time polling day approached there were enough signs of a ‘wave’ in Delhi. And as seasoned journalists know a ‘wave’ can take a party well above all expectations as has happened with AAP.

The vote was against the arrogance of the BJP as manifested by PM Modi and Shah; it was against corruption; it was against price rise; it was against communalism. The vote was for AAP and its ability to convince the voter that it stood against corruption, was for the poor, and would at least try to provide a honest, accountable, transparent and non-arrogant government to deal with the citizens' concerns and issues.

It is clear that PM Modi and Shah are fast outrunning the ‘magic’ they seemed to have woven in the wake of a particularly abject second term of the Manmohan Singh government. The Prime Minister’s seeming invincibility was first punctured by the entire opposition in the winter session of Parliament on the issue of conversions and communalism with the PM visibly wilting under the attack. Delhi has followed just two months later with this shocking defeat, that has left the BJP stumped as it has not been able to move out of single digit figures, with the current tally seeming to stop at just four seats.

The campaign run by Shah ran into crores of rupees as just the advertisements would indicate, and was volatile and high profile to say the least. Unlike AAP that was visibly cash strapped, the BJP was spending money in feeding voters not once but twice a day in many constituencies with liquor being distributed freely in the shanties. AAP fed only its workers, and addressed the voters with issues. The campaign of course focused on PM Modi with the candidate reduced to a small photograph on the side, if at all.

The BJP remained confident that it would do well, and bought laddus and sweets, a day before counting, in quantities difficult to define. It is not clear where this confidence was coming from as usually candidates are able to assess their position by the end of polling day.

All said and done the Delhi election has placed the master strategist and the master campaigner Shah and PM Modi respectively in the dock. But then given the state of the BJP it is unlikely that anyone there will find the courage to bell the cat.