BJP counts on Modi wave in Delhi as well

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will use Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the face of the party’s campaign to win the Delhi assembly polls, continuing with its successful strategy of contesting state elections without naming chief ministerial candidates.

The party’s election posters in Delhi feature photographs of Modi with slogans such as Poorna bahumat (Clear majority), Sthir sarkar (Stable government), Chalo chalein Modi ke saath (Let us go with Modi) and Modi ji ki baat par, chalo vikaas ki raah par (On Modi’s word, let’s head towards the path of development) visible across the national capital on billboards and bus stops.

Most of the posters ignore local leaders, much like the party’s election campaigns in Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, where it has successfully formed governments.

While the BJP says that Modi is a natural choice for them, the Congress party claims the BJP has been forced to make Modi its face of the campaign because it doesn’t have a local leader of suitable stature.

“He is our leader, not only of the party but of the country also. He leads us and so it is but natural that you would see his photos and his posters in our election campaign,” said Ramesh Bidhuri, BJP leader and a Lok Sabha member from Delhi. “We have seven Lok Sabha members from Delhi, our party has the most senior legislators in the state. Ours is a democratic party, where all are leaders and all are workers.”

Mukesh Sharma, a spokesperson for the Congress party’s Delhi unit, said: “BJP in Delhi has no agenda and Modi is the only issue for them. BJP will not be able to win this election even in the name of Modi.”

The Delhi assembly has been kept in suspended animation since 14 February after former chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal quit the post over the defeat of a resolution to introduce the anti-graft ombudsman Jan Lokpal Bill in the assembly.

In the state elections, in December 2013, the BJP was the largest party, winning 31 out of 70 seats with a vote share of 33.07% but did not stake claim to form a government. The AAP won 28 seats and the Congress, which led a 15-year-old government in the state, was pushed to a distant third with just eight seats.

Experts say projecting Modi is a tested strategy and it is a way to rein in the squabbling within the BJP’s Delhi state unit.

“The BJP is basically working against two things—one is the opponent, which is either the Congress or its regional allies in different states, the other is that the party is working hard to fight its internal battles. With a campaign like this, the message that is going out is that it is all under the larger public image of Modi and state leaders like earlier elections do not hold individual claims for being the face of the campaign,” said Manisha Priyam, a New Delhi-based political analyst.

If the BJP projects any other local leader in its campaign, it would run the risk of making it a contest between that leader versus Kejriwal, according to Priyam. “The BJP itself also knows that it has no state leader in the party that can match the public image of Kejriwal and so it is a risk they would not like to take,” she said.