‘Assembly elections were, in a way, a trial for the strategy that the party wants to adopt in the LS polls,’ said a BJP leader.
NEW DELHI
With the latest round of Assembly elections over, it’s now time for the major parties’ strategists and backroom boys to move on to the big Lok Sabha battle in May 2024 and apply the learnings from the latest outing or tweak the blueprint to iron out irritants reflected in the results.
For the BJP, which had sent observers, poll in-charges and media spokespersons from the national team to all the states where the elections have just concluded, it was a warm-up of sorts for its backroom boys who would be back in action soon, said a national leader.
“The Assembly elections were, in a way, a trial for the strategy that the party wants to adopt in the parliamentary polls,” said a BJP leader.
Apart from booth level management, the party had also tried out new permutations and combinations in media relations also during the Assembly elections.
“Teams of national spokespersons were sent to all the states much in advance. These were tasked to train the local leaders in addressing media queries and being available to media persons,” said a leader.
The strategy was to keep the state leaders in the forefront. “National spokespersons camped right through the two-month period leading up to voting in states but there were clear instructions to them not to get quoted or face the TV cameras while clarifying media questions,” said a spokesman from Uttar Pradesh who was deputed in Madhya Pradesh.
He said the party wanted to groom the local leaders and did not want the national leaders to walk away with the credit for work supplemented by the younger, local leaders.
“We were like the back-up to the state-level media teams. For us also it was an experience to get a feel of the state and interact with party leaders. The parliamentary elections may require us to return to these states again,” said a BJP national spokesperson who reached Delhi to be ready for official duties on the result day.
Giving an example of supporting the local leaders, a national spokesman said they were camping permanently in the state that was assigned to them and worked as relievers for the local spokespersons who had to attend to their families and do household work.
Sources said the BJP’s experiment of getting MPs to fight the Assembly elections, especially in the Hindi belt, was also like a template in the works. “It was a great exercise for oiling the party machinery ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. The MPs went into the field and reestablished their bonds with the worker on the ground. This will serve the party well in building the tempo for the parliamentary elections,” said a BJP leader.
In MP, the BJP campaign was led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party avoided giving a clear answer on whether Shivraj Singh Chouhan will be the Chief Minister if it wins in Madhya Pradesh. The party has also fielded seven MPs, including Union Ministers Narendra Singh Tomar, Prahlad Patel and Faggan Singh Kulaste, for the Assembly elections.
For Kamal Nath, who is the Congress’ state unit chief, these elections were doubly important following the rebellion by Jyotiraditya Scindia in 2020, which had led to his government collapsing after just 15 months.
His support team on the media front relied mostly on the likes of his media advisor Piyush Babela, who had set up a makeshift war room at the PCC office in Bhopal.
Babela, a former journalist, was the link between national media and Nath who constantly kept moving around the state for campaign.
Diligently sharing Nath’s email ID, Babela was in the thick of things while asking mediapersons to send their queries on the ID for getting answers from the PCC chief.
“You don’t worry about where he is, just send your query and you shall get the answer,” he was seen telling a reporter at the PCC office in Bhopal’s Shivaji Nagar.
The team of central Congress leadership, including national spokesperson Supriya Shrinate, that camped in MP during the election has also returned to Delhi and is expected to channel its resources towards the next parliamentary elections.