Gujarat elections: How BJP campaigned in Gujarat

As the campaigning for the last phase of the Gujarat assembly polls came to an end, the Bharatiya Janata Party has left no stone unturned in its campaigning, as it grappled with an undercurrent of support for the AAP and Congress amid mounting anti-incumbency. Flash mobs, magic shows, and raths with ‘smart’ yatra were at the heart of the party’s campaign.

With curtains drawn on the campaign, party leaders shared how prime minister Narendra Modi's rallies were the centrepiece of the campaign. Leaders from the party’s state unit told Deccan Herald that the Prime Minister held as many as 31 rallies, and the BJP's strategy was to organise these public meetings during the election campaign only in its areas where the party is comparatively weaker.

Leaders said that Modi’s 31 rallies covered each of the state’s 33 districts, and the concluding jan sabha and road show at Ahmedabad were aimed at reaching out to the 16 constituencies surrounding Ahmedabad.

Zubin Asharam, the Gujarat media co-incharge said that at the heart of the party’s campaign was the page committee. “The BJP’s election thrust is traditionally based on the panna pramukh system, but this year the panna had a committee instead. So for every 20-25 names of voters per page, we had five people,” Asharam said.

Each page committee was tasked with reaching out to only one person per family, who were then asked to convince their family members. “The page committees touched as many as 82 lakh families, and if we count 2-3 voter per family, then the target is to convince 2 crore voters,” said Asharam. Gujarat has over 4.9 crore voters who are registered to vote in this year’s polls.

Apart from that, the party had a slew of unique initiatives to reached out to the urban as well as rural voter. “We had magician shows which we held at 3556 locations, street plays in over 3700 areas, live tableaus in 1400 locations and something called vikas ka garba,” said Asharam. All these initiatives were aimed to reach out to the rural voter, where the BJP is relatively weaker.

For the urban voter, Asharam says, there were flash mobs in 1700 areas, a yatra with over 150 ‘smart raths’ that criss-crossed across 1200 locations in all 182 assembly constituency, and, bands called ‘Youth with NaMo’ that performed in 1400 areas.

The party’s push was intensified as it faced voter complacency after being in power for 27 years in the state, growing anti-incumbency especially within rural areas, and the vocal campaign of the new entrant to the state’s politics – the Aam Aadmi Party.

A key strategist of the party, however, said that they are wary of the silent support base of the Congress party, which managed to win 77 seats in 2017. In addition to that, in over 33 seats in 2017, the difference between the winning BJP candidate and the Congress candidate was 2000 or less.

The BJP managed 1.49 crore votes in 2017, and by the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, they managed 1.85 crore votes, and these votes Asharam says helped the BJP win over 173 of the 182 constituencies. “We are aiming at 2 crore votes this year,” he said.

Senior leaders of the party’s state unit said that through the campaign, the BJP has kept communal comments to a minimum, especially when dealing with AAP since the Arvind Kejriwal-led party has Hinduvta undertones in their campaign. For instance, Kejriwal has promised voters a trip to the Ram Janambhoomi temple.

Party leaders also said that the BJP, by design, asked PM Modi to not mention Kejriwal or AAP too much. The party’s top strategist mentioned above said that the BJP believes that the AAP, since it is not bound by ideology, will not be as successful as it appears.