BJP Reels Under Bhagwat, VK Singh Impact In Bihar, Goes From Aggressive To Reverse Gear

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party, from an aggressive,high powered election campaign, seem to be subsiding into Bihar’s reality. Indications that all is not well in the BJPs own assessment came first from the decision to curtail Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘carpet bombing’ campaign in the state and more recently from party president Amit Shah’s effort to distance the poll results from the government at the centre.

"It is Parliament that runs the country and we have a clear majority there. BJP's policies are not linked to victory and defeat in elections... No state assembly election can become a referendum for the central government," Shah said while maintaining that the remaining two phases of the Assembly elections will be a “clean sweep” for the party.

The BJP, despite the money power and the reinforcements sent by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to Bihar months before the polls, was placed on the backfoot from the start. The interview by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat basically calling for a review of the reservation policy was taken into the districts by the grand alliance to a point where it has become the conversation in every household of this caste bound state. This has had an impact on the Mahadalits and the extremely backward sections, the two constituencies that the BJP had been targeting to move out of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s reach.

Indications that the impact has been fairly severe has now come from PM Modi himself who at a recent rally in Bihar said, "Rights given by Babasaheb Ambedkar for the socially backward classes will never be taken away by my government." He even said that while he had differences with Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav on this issue he was with them.

RSS chief Bhagwat has again followed up with clarifications at a meeting of the Akhil Bharatiya Valmiki Mahasabha Monday, an organisation allied to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bhagwat said the Sangh favours the development of all Hindus and supports all efforts to end disparity and untouchability within the community.

The second major impact on the Bihar elections that has gone against the BJP, has been the death by fire of the two Dalit toddlers in Haryana, a state being governed by the BJP. This has sparked off an overly adverse reaction amongst the Dalits becoming a cause of major worry for the BJP’s allies, the Lokjanshakti party led by Ram Vilas Paswan and the Hindustan Awam Morcha chief and former Bihar Chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi. Their supporters have been questioning the two Dalit led parties and their candidates on this issue, and both admit that it has been difficult to explain. More so as the grand alliance has again succeeded, in taking the issue to the people in the remote villages as well, and as Manjhi admitted in an interview Monday this “has created pressure to explain and sometimes it becomes difficult to do so.”

Sources told this reporter that from “certain victory” the allies now are aware that they could be staring defeat in the face, and the worry was clearly etched on the faces of their candidates. Matters have certainly not been helped by BJP Minister V.K.Singh’s remarks equating the reaction to the burning of the toddlers with throwing stones at a dog and as Manjhi told The Hindu, ‘the Opposition’s aggression has brought on the pressure of explaining these remarks; sometimes it becomes difficult, but people will ultimately see through this ruse.”

But from an aggressive posture at the start of the elections, the NDA alliance has been put on the defensive. Bhagwat’s remarks are still being explained by the BJP and its allies, and it is not clear as yet whether this is having a positive impact. The first two rounds clearly have not gone the BJP way, with the party moving into defensive-mode. More so as the communal card has been rejected by the voters completely, and the caste combinations seem to be swerving back to the old ‘social justice’ formula being offered as a cohesive whole again by the erstwhile Janata Dal colleagues Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal leader has come into his own in these polls after a long gap. As a Lokjanshakti party leader said with some admiration, “Laluji is back in full form, and is devastating, even more so than Nitish Kumar when it comes to taking on PM Modi directly in the rallies, and puncturing holes in the BJP’s campaign.” His take offs on PM Modi have gone viral even in the big cities of India and now he is being recognised to some extent by the mainstream media that had been covering only the BJP rallies till date. "the BJP is desperate. They are running around like a khargosh (rabbit). Nothing is working for them. Not beef, not Hindu-Muslim issues, not even their assurances that reservations will stay after RSS chief Bhagwat's comments. And mind you, Bhagwat did not say it once, he said it repeatedly,” Lalu Prasad is quoted as saying. And as he tells his supporters over and over again, "Narendra Modi and Amit Shah will have to resign after the Bihar polls are over."

The BJP has sunk considerable money into the campaign, with the RSS cadres being virtually ‘posted’ in Bihar well before the elections. It was seen as a crucial election by the party, as a follow up to its excellent Lok Sabha performance. Bihar is a crucial state and seen as a make or break election by both sides. The BJP had been projecting it as a referendum for PM Modi who occupied all the billboards, and dominated the campaign till date. To the opposition charge that the BJP had no chief minister candidate to project, the response from the party was that the vote was for PM Modi who would then bring in a chief minister who would transform Bihar.

Now the BJP President, in what is clearly a reverse-gear strategy, claims that the Bihar election is not a referendum on PM Modi, or rather he has used the term central government. Interestingly in Patna, dominated by hoardings all over, there was not a single one of any leader other than the Prime Minister and the BJP President. The local leaders from Bihar were not even visible, except for a few odd bill boards of the Lok Janshakti party.

The Citizen was the first to report on the trend that was certainly not pro-BJP in the manner in which it was being depicted by the corporate owned media. The support for Nitish Kumar, and Lalu Yadav as well was palpable just before the first round of the elections, and it was clear even at that stage that Bihar had more or less made up its mind. The only uncertain constituency was that of the Dalits and the extremely backward castes who had voted for Nitish Kumar the last time around, but were being hammered at by an aggressive BJP campaign. This vote bank was showing signs of being divided, but the above issues seems to have had a consolidating impact. To what extent will only be known on November 8 when the votes are counted.