Analysis
Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections will be held on December 1.
Updated : Nov 30, 2020, 03:07 PM IST | Edited by : Ravi Dubey
There are 150 seats, on which the victory will decide which party mayor will become in the Municipal Corporation. The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) won 99 seats in the last election. Owaisi's party AIMIM won 44 seats. The BJP had to be content with four seats. This time, both the electoral environment and the equation are different.
Municipal elections are often contested on local issues. Electricity, water, roads, garbage are the same issues. If the state's big leaders go into the election campaign, then that is a big thing. If the president of the regional party campaigned, then the matter is still understood, but if the national-level leaders get to the campaign, a lot is at stake for the party.
Something similar is with the Bharatiya Janata Party. The local elections saw many leaders, including senior BJP leaders, party chiefs, union ministers, current and former chief ministers, campaigning. All the leaders came to campaign for the first time in the municipal elections. AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi slammed the BJP on Sunday, saying, "it seems like we are electing a prime minister ... only Trump is left to campaign".
Why is this election so important for BJP?
The ruling TRS won the assembly elections in 2018 but lost four Lok Sabha seats to the BJP in the 2019 parliamentary elections. On November 10, the BJP contested the Dubbaka seat, which the TRS won in 2018 by a huge margin. The recent success and the political decline of the Congress and the TDP have given the BJP a start.
The TRS has also faced criticism for the recent floods in the city. The GHMC elections were scheduled to be held in January, but the TRS has taken it forward after the defeat in Dabka, hoping to stop its rivals. The boundaries of the GHMC include 24 constituencies with a fifth of the total constituencies of the state and four Lok Sabha seats. This makes the GHMC even more important, especially for the 2023 assembly elections that are quite important.
BJP body election means to reach state power
BJP feels that state power can be achieved through civic elections. It has been done so many times in the past. In the 2018 Haryana civic elections, the BJP captured Karnal, Panipat, Yamunanagar, Rohtak, and Hisar's five municipal corporations. This increased the party workers' enthusiasm who lost power in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. BJP got its benefit in the Lok Sabha elections in the year 2019.
The art of turning small occasions into big events
The mantra of BJP's success is organizational expansion. Since 2014, this expansion is receiving much attention. The party now converts small occasions into big events for its strength at the grassroots level. The arrival of big leaders in small events increases the enthusiasm of local level activists. On the one hand, the top leaders are aware of the party's position even in small places. On the other hand, the workers can also put their problems in front of the big leaders. Because of this, there is no gap between leaders and workers from bottom to top.