Rajasthan polls: Yogi likely to be BJP’s campaign star alongside PM Modi

New Delhi/Udaipur, Oct 7: In the run up to the next year’s mandatory and crucial exercise for election to the Rajasthan Assembly, the BJP is preparing its campaign-strategy well with all essential ingredients but is determined to push hardliner Hindutva card in the form of Yogi Adityanath. Along with a series of big crowd rallies by the UP Chief Minister, the party will also showcase specially created water management programmes and other developmental works of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. “Votes will be sought certainly in the name of Narendra Modi,” says a key Rajasthan BJP poll strategist but hastens to add in the same breadth that there is need to “maintain party’s increasing appeal on urban-dwellers and also ensure that all political assets like Yogi Aditynath’s mass appeal among Hindus be made use of”. It is in this context; the BJP leaders in the state indicate that Yogi Adityanath, party’s neo-radical face would be a star campaigner alongside none other than the Prime Minister Modi himself. “The roles of different grades of BJP leaders are already carved out. Both Yogi Adityanath and PM Modi or for that matter even Vasundhara Raje and BJP Amit Shah will address big rallies and occasionally interact with intellectuals and business chambers. At the subsequent stage, it will be booth level workers who will have higher involvement to get in touch with people and convert the crowds into votes,” says Rajasthan BJP women wing leader Deependra Bhinder. It is therefore the priority for all frontal organisations especially the women wing now to involve party workers at the booth level. The party leaders admit there will be anti-incumbency wave and there should not be “deer syndrome”. “In Rajasthan, people say deer would conceal its eyes on the ground thinking none can see them. We have to prepare well to counter all questions those can be raised. Our campaign style for 2018 should focus that the BJP government has been and in future too will be better and different in the matter of governance,” says one leader. The party’s new election promises for 2018 would include massive improvement in power distribution, adequate steps for marketing of agro and horticultural products and possible framing of new and harsher laws against child molestation and growing incidents of rape against minors. “There is a growing menace of rape against minors.....no particular region or caste group can be blamed for this. It’s a social menace and we need harsher laws,” says Independent legislator Randhir Singh Bhinder, who supports Raje’s BJP government. In political terms, despite attempts from disgruntled elements, Vasundhara Raje at present remains undisputed leader of the party in the state as former detractors like Gulab Kataria have now fallen in line. Moreover, earlier this year in April, the Chief Minister reinforced her political might when BJP’s Shobha Rani could win the Dholpur assembly seat by a huge margin of 38,648 votes. The Dholpur bypoll was necessitated after BSP MLA B L Kushwah was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in connection with a murder case and was later disqualified. “Notwithstanding all their attempts, the Congress party could not win or get a compensation over the humiliating defeat of 2013 when they could win only 21 seats in the 2013 Assembly polls. Daughter of BJP veteran leader Vijayaraje Scindia, Ms Vasundhara Raje joined the BJP only in 1984, over a decade after marrying into the erstwhile royal family of Dholpur in Rajasthan. UNI