Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls: How Shivraj Singh Chouhan brought BJP back in the race
Scindia comes the closest among Congress leaders in drawing crowds.
In the days immediately after the appointment of Chhindwara MP Kamal Nath as state president in May, the Congress suddenly emerged as an old but functional machine that could offer a fight to the BJP in the coming elections.
This perception — and it was largely just that, a perception — seems to be now petering out to favour the BJP. In the initial analysis, it now seems that the Congress leadership that had generated interest in the minds of the voters with the change of guard at the PCC has now lost steam.
The BJP led by CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan seems to have recovered from the upheaval caused by the changes in the Congress leadership and is now cruising ahead according to what seems like a plan.
The single most important factor that has given weight to this perception is Shivraj Singh Chouhan throwing all his resources in the field and commencing version 3.0 of his ‘Jan Ashirwad Yatra’ — a mass contact programme that worked for him in the 2008 and 2013 elections. Chouhan has been touring the state continuously since July 16, spending barely one or two days in the state capital in a week. He is going around in a bus designed as a rath, receiving grievances and making whatever promises politicians promise in poll time.
Most importantly, he is with ‘his people’ making many feel that he is back in saddle after losing balance temporarily. By September, the CM would cover almost all the 230 constituencies in the state.
In response, what is the Congress leadership up to right now? The Congress tried to reply to Chouhan’s ‘Jan Ashirwad Yatra’ with a ‘Pol Khol Yatra’, the format of which entailed following him and ‘puncturing’ his claims on development and promises.
The Congress yatra is getting a lukewarm response and the party claims that Chouhan’s yatra has crowds because they are carted to the venues by government agencies.
There may be an element of truth in it, but the fact is that Jitu Patwari, the Congress MLA organising the party’s yatra, is not really a match for Chouhan. Congress leaders dismiss the efficacy of yatras as political tools as mere sponsored government stunts. But the stunts are changing the perceptions of people about Chouhan’s government and undoing the damage it had suffered earlier. What the Congress has failed in doing and what it promises to begin with in early September is matching Chouhan’s campaign with deploying their campaign committee chairman Jyotiraditya Scindia in the field.
Scindia comes the closest among Congress leaders in drawing crowds and matching Chouhan’s popularity, but he has not yet committed himself fully to the Congress campaign. Also, in the last three months, a major part of PCC president Kamal Nath’s time has been devoted to addressing the gaps in the Congress organisation — something he perceives as very crucial to taking on the BJP in the state. This has left him with little time for campaigning.
Another reason responsible for the recent ‘feel good’ in the BJP camp is two surveys: one by the Congress-controlled National Herald and the other by the biggest Hindi newspaper of the state that has given the BJP an edge over the Congress. There are about three and a half months to go before the elections — which is a long time in politics — but the Congress needs to up its game in the campaign, if it has to take on one of the most popular CMs of the BJP.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)