It was dinner time but women came out in their small gardens and balconies facing the venue of a public meeting. All they knew was that "some Modi's man" was coming. It was amidst a chorus of "Modi, Modi" that BJP chief Amit Shah stepped on to the dais at Shivaji Nagar in the high-profile Gurgaon assembly constituency.
Swarna Kaur, who has seen the place transform from a dusty village to an urbanised locality, says "The Congress government has not done any work here. We have great expectations from Modi," she says.
Modi is BJP's trump card in the state, where the party has never come to power on its own. Shah, who has held a series of rallies in Haryana, and other party leaders are flaunting 'Brand Modi'.
When the prime minister returns from the US, he will be shuffling between rallies in Haryana and Maharashtra from October 4 to 13. He will begin with a rally in Karnal, said BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. "Modi's performance as prime minister has further strengthened the Modi factor," BJP leader from the state, Captain Abhimanyu told dna. "Also, any non-Congress government has come to power in the state only with the support of the BJP," said Abhimanyu.
The BJP is also banking on the fact that Haryana generally opts for the party which has government at the Centre. And that BJP has won seven of the eight Lok Sabha seats which comes to 60 of the 90 assembly segments.
But, the party accepts that division of votes among smaller parties, especially its former ally Kuldip Bishnoi's Haryana Janhit Congress, could eat into its vote share. The party, which has not projected a chief ministerial candidate, does not have a strong leadership in the state. The Congress, which has ruled the state for a decade, is trying to cash in on this.
In Gurgaon, which has an influential Punjabi and Yadav vote, several people are angry with the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government as they feel it has done injustice to them by "diverting its revenue to Rohtak".
Rahul Chauhan, a youth, says he is impressed with Modi's performance on all fronts. As he listens to Shah, who is talking of how the prime minister has bolstered India's pride abroad and cites changed economic parameters, Rahul says Modi will get support of the youth. "We will vote for Modi," also says Anita Yadav. But her neighbour Sunita Yadav is a bit skeptical. "We want someone who will bring down prices.... Nothing has changed in the past three months," she says. But the BJP, which is training its guns at Congress and Chautala's INLD, is banking heavily on Modi. The Congress has fielded octogenarian Dharambir Gaba against BJP's 44-year-old Umesh Aggarwal, who finished third in 2009 polls here.
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