Soon after a survey declared BJP to emerge as the single biggest party in the 2014 elections, Delhi BJP saw fireworks when SP and BSP joined hands with it.
Soon after a survey declared BJP to emerge as the single biggest party in the 2014 elections, Delhi BJP saw fireworks when SP and BSP joined hands with it along with several other OBC leaders.
The former general secretary of BSP’s Delhi unit and OBC leader Suman Saini, SP leader Krishna Kant Singh along with some other workers joined BJP in the presence of party in charge of Delhi election Nitin Gadkari and other senior party leaders.
Welcoming Saini and Singh, Gadkari hinted that a lot more was in store for those who joined them. “Those who are joining the party should not think that they would remain the workers,” he said, “Unlike Congress, which is the party of mother and son, SP which is of father and son and BSP in which Mayawati is everything, BJP is the party of workers.”
“Those joining are the owners of the party. As I, who started as a worker in the party, got the opportunity to become its president,” Gadkari told the party workers.
Gadkari played his cards well and attacked Congress for playing the “vote bank politics”. Accusing Congress of infusing fear among the Muslims about Narendra Modi and BJP, he exhorted that more riots were taking place in Maharastra and Uttar Pradesh than in Gujarat.
He said BJP doesn’t favours politics based on caste, creed, religion and language and everyone would get equal opportunity for development. Gadkari said that “BJP is against the terrorists and terrorism but not against the minority community”.
Trying to prove BJP’s commitment to the minorities, Gadkari said it was Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government that made APJ Abdul Kalam the President of India.
On Wednesday, the Times Now-CVoter survey suggested that the NDA will be able to achieve 186 seats in 2014 general elections.
However, the claims that the survey projected may swing to either side. Because the survey is projecting BJP’s win, others may or may not join Congress which it will surely try to take on its side. 2014 is a long time and political alignments may well change before that.
Also, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and his apparent rival Congress’ Rahul Gandhi has not started campaigning in many of the states yet. In fact, the Hindi heartland of UP and Bihar is still untouched by them.
It will be too early to dismiss Congress anti-BJP and anti-Modi planks. As R Jagannathan says in his article, Since the tendency in voting patterns is to over-correct on the side of momentum, the chances are these trends will get accentuated as we come closer to the poll dates. This is what brought Akhilesh Yadav to power last year – a small swing gave him a clearly majority in terms of seats on a minority of votes – less than 30 percent.
But one thing is for sure, whatever moves Congress will make from now on it will only be an exposé. It may have to chew its own words if it goes for wooing Mayawati.
But it has got its own Ramifications for this. Jagannathan puts it simply: One may presume that a Maya-Congress and Nitish-Congress alliance will dent the BJP bandwagon; but alliances have a way of creating counter-consolidations, and so one cannot predict that the combos will do any better than solos.
Thus, BJP may well achieve 200 mark and Modi’s dream may well come true.
