108 rallies and road shows in the last 26 days — this was the campaign effort put in by BJP’s top two crowd-pullers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah in the four poll-bound states this November.
The party expects this whirlwind and wide campaign by PM Modi and Shah to bring it rich dividends, especially in the Hindi-heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where their crowd-connect was high. BJP made these state elections all about the PM, with its official poll slogans coined as ‘MP Ke Mann Mein Modi Hai’ and ‘Modi Sathe Apno Rajasthan’.
Modi, hence, led the show for the BJP with 42 public rallies and four big road shows between November 2 and November 27. The PM’s maximum efforts went into Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the two large states. The PM did as many as 15 rallies and two road shows in Jaipur and Bikaner in Rajasthan.
In Madhya Pradesh, PM Modi did 15 rallies and a road show in Indore, while he did eight rallies and a road show in Hyderabad in Telangana, a state that the BJP is desperate to make inroads. Chhattisgarh saw four rallies by PM Modi. The campaign by the PM was crucial since the BJP did not project any Chief Ministerial face in the four states and fought under the leadership of Modi.
Modi had done a big campaign in Karnataka too, including road shows in Bengaluru, during the elections there earlier this year. But the results did not reflect the effort that was put in by the PM with BJP suffering a big defeat. Congress has been citing the same to say that the ‘Narendra Modi factor’ has its limitations when it comes to the state elections where local faces matter.
“There was an issue of bad governance in Karnataka plus limitations of crowd-connect as it was a Kannada-speaking state. The situation is quite different in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, the Hindi-speaking states. The Modi factor will have maximum impact here due to the PM’s big campaign and his appeal amongst masses,” a senior BJP leader told News18.
Amit Shah’s Expansive Campaign
Shah did an aggressive campaign in the four states as well, notching up 62 rallies and road shows or ‘rath sabhas’ this month. A stand-out fact was Shah’s big campaign in Telangana where he did as many as 18 campaign events, just shy of 19 such campaign events he did in the largest among the four states, Madhya Pradesh. “This shows how serious the BJP is about Telangana,” the senior leader quoted earlier said.
The home minister did as many as seven road shows in Telangana, more than in other state. Shah did his maximum number of public rallies in Madhya Pradesh at 17, while he did 11 public rallies in Telangana, nine in Rajasthan and six in Chhattisgarh. Shah also held press conferences in the poll-bound states and launched the manifesto of the party in Chhattisgarh.
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