BJP banking on Modi magic for this Bihar election

A giant cut out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi looms over Patna’s busiest IT Circle. “Modi ney diya, wadey sey jyada” (Modi gave more than he promised), the giant banner alludes Modi’s Rs 1.25 lakh crore package for Bihar.

A giant cut out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi looms over Patna’s busiest IT Circle. “Modi ney diya, wadey sey jyada” (Modi gave more than he promised), the giant banner alludes Modi’s Rs 1.25 lakh crore package for Bihar.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) believes pitching Modi is a shrewd strategy. “It ensured media recall and larger than life imagery built on his successful forays abroad”, a party worker Dhananjay said.

It also saved BJP the trouble of projecting a CM candidate. Having successfully converted the Bihar political discourse from inanities and nit-picking to force rivals to walk the talk, the BJP emphasis is now centred on Modi’s charisma versus chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Bihari asmita (Pride) and a development package, which it insists, ‘the Centre alone can deliver’.

It also argues a Centre-state symphony-government’s in Delhi and Patna simultaneously, to fast track Bihar.

That’s the gist of its aggressive campaign unleashed last month to win the ‘battle of Bihar’.

“It surely is a ‘make or break’ campaign for the BJP”, says Shivanand Tiwary, former Kumar aide and JD-U dissident, who had warned his party executive in January 2014, not to underplay the Modi impact.

Tthe BJP is determined it will not lose Bihar.

A loss could spell a Panipat as it would lose it political momentum nationally and encourage its rivals to gang up against it.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s strategy has been to draw a longer development line than Kumar.