BJP plans Modi-focused election campaign

The BJP will fall back on its most trusted face – Prime Minister Narendra Modi – to win the assembly election in four states. Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir will go to poll soon and the party has decided not to project a face in these states.

The BJP will fall back on its most trusted face – Prime Minister Narendra Modi – to win the assembly election in four states. Haryana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir will go to poll soon and the party has decided not to project a face in these states.

Party’s headquarters here is flooded with request from election-bound states for a Modi-centric campaign in their territory to blunt the opposition’s criticism about BJP’s failure to pick up its leader. Factionalism and lack of a leader having pan-state acceptance in these four are the two driving reasons behind party’s decisions not to project a face. There are too many claimants in Haryana – none of them is a mass leader.

“Haryana leaders who met election in-charge Kailash Vijayavargiya, a minister in Madhya Pradesh, here on Thursday suggested that Modi-centric campaign should be launched. Jharkhand leaders too want Modi to extensively tour the tribal state during the poll. Modi’s charisma is still at work,” a senior BJP leader told HT. The BJP is going it alone in these two states, currently ruled by the Congress or an alliance of which it is a part.

BJP chief Amit Shah has flagged off party’s Sankalp Yatra from sMahendergarh in Haryana on August 14 and will address a rally in Ranchi on September 8.

Even in Maharashtra, where the BJP has a tie-up with Shiv Sena, the two have decided to keep the CM candidate issue on the backburner for a while. BJP’s CM aspirant Gopinath Munde is no more and Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray – who was initially projected as the CM candidate by his party – isn’t insisting on his projection.

BJP’s real challenge is in Jammu and Kashmir where it has a base in Jammu region (37 seats) and Ladakh (4 seats), but is yet to leave footprints in the valley (46 seats).