National leaders to boost BJP’s civic poll campaign in Gujarat

Perhaps for the first time in recent memory, national leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be campaigning in the civic elections in Gujarat.

Sources in the BJP said that among the national leaders expected to campaign for the party in the upcoming civic elections are: former deputy prime minister LK Advani, BJP president Nitin Gadkari, leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj, cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Siddhu, leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, former party president Rajnath Sinh and TV star-turned-politician Smriti Irani.

This development has surprised many observers of the political scene because civic elections are fought mainly on local issues, which are best understood by local leaders. Moreover, Gujarat is a bastion of the saffron party and the state’s chief minister is the party’s star campaigner even outside Gujarat. Then why this need for national leaders to campaign for the party in the civic polls?

Sources in the BJP said that the upcoming civic elections are different from the local body polls held earlier. This election is being held in the shadow of some unfavourable developments for the party, the most negative being the arrest of former minister Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin Sheik fake encounter case, a source said on the condition of anonymity.

As if to prove his point, the source claimed that in the last four or five public meetings in Ahmedabad that the chief minister had addressed, Modi had harped on just four things: alleged ‘misuse’ of the CBI by the UPA government; corruption at the Centre as is allegedly apparent from the CWG mess; and development in Gujarat as contrasted with ‘lack of development’ in Congress-ruled states. 

The source said that none of the four issues mentioned above was a local issue that could addressed by municipal corporations. Yet the chief minister had stuck to them. The party cannot risk having something go wrong for it in the upcoming civic polls because that could damage the party’s national image, the source said.

This year elections will be held not only for six municipal corporations but polls for taluka panchayats and district panchayats are also scheduled later in the same month. The civic elections are, therefore, crucial for the BJP’s image, sources said.

The sources said that, for this reason, Gadkari’s public meetings will be organised in the Marathi belt of Surat and Vadodara, while those of Rajnath Singh and Siddhu will be held in areas where there are large North Indian communities.

Arun Jaitley will have a series of meeting with the intelligentsia in almost all the cities of the state, the sources said.

As civic body elections are generally fought on local issues such as drainage, water, roads and hygiene, women voters matter the most. Women are the first to be affected if there is a disruption in civic services. Hence, Sushma Swaraj and Smriti Irani would be campaigning specially to influence women voters towards the BJP, the sources claimed.

BJP dissidents, however, see the impending arrival of national leaders differently. They say the national leaders are coming as part of a damage control exercise by the party’s state unit. The allegedly arbitrary and unfair distribution of ticket had caused great anger among party workers and demoralised them, a dissident said.

As a result, many workers were thinking of staying away from the campaign, if not leaving the party altogether, he added. The presence of national leaders might persuade the disgruntled cadres to join the campaign and the party could then claim
that there was no rift in the BJP, the dissident said.