New Delhi: Strategists of the Bharatiya Janata Party had realised by May 2021 that they were fighting a strong anti-incumbency in Uttar Pradesh. This was attributed to multiple factors, including unemployment, anger against some Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) and the tragedies suffered by common people, especially in the rural and semi-urban areas because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Sunday Guardian spoke to three party functionaries who were closely monitoring and executing the party’s multiple strategies, many of which have not come out in the media earlier because of being overshadowed by other “bigger” and noticeable steps that the party took to turn this anti-incumbency into a pro-incumbency, which ultimately created a vote share gap of nearly 10% between it and the Samajwadi Party (SP) when the results were declared on 10 March. (BJP’s vote share is 41.3%, SP’s is 32.1%, with the total difference of votes being 85 lakh).
“The challenge, at the time, was big. We had several issues that were threatening our electoral prospects. Our leaders, as is expected from political representatives, did not allow these worries to come out in the public domain. The SP cadre and a supportive media had already assumed that we were losing,” a party strategist, who was involved in the party’s campaigning from July till March this year, recalled while speaking to The Sunday Guardian after the results of the elections were declared.
KEY MOMENTS
To ensure a repetition of the successful result of 2017, BJP strategists, led by election in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan, co-incharge Anurag Thakur and Sunil Bansal, BJP general secretary (organisation), put in a slew of measures by August 2021 to tackle the anti-government narrative which was threatening to keep the BJP at around 180 seats, plus minus 20, in the state.
By the time Pradhan was officially announced as the election in-charge of the state in September 2021, a larger system, design and plan were already in place. Among this strategy included fielding at least 170 new faces from Assembly seats (including changing 100 candidates, either by changing their seat, by denying them ticket or by giving ticket to their close relatives and not repeating 70 candidates who had contested in the 2017 polls but lost).
The party, to reach out to the maximum castes and communities, out of the total 373 seats that it contested on, gave representation to a staggering 44 castes and communities. Its main competitor, the SP, which contested from 346 seats, gave tickets to 34 castes and communities. The BJP gave tickets to 105 Other Backward Class (OBC) candidates spread across 19 sub-castes, 83 Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates spread across 14 SC sub-castes and 184 candidates from the unreserved category from 11 castes and communities.
The party also decided to do “positive” and “aggressive” campaigning after it realised that it had a “lot of achievements” to showcase, many of which had not been aggressively marketed, and hence had not become a talking point among the voters. “We identified 40 positive issues that were about the work done by the BJP government at the state and the Centre which had impacted the people of the state which strengthened the narrative of ‘double engine’ government. These issues were made to reach the voters through 27,000 small centres that started operating at the ground level by November under the ‘Jo Kaha Woh Kiya’ campaign. We would speak to voters and ask them what they thought about our work and these words acted as our publicity campaign material. ‘Fark Saaf Hai’ (the difference is clear—referring to the impact of the work done by the past government) and ‘Bhule to Nahee’ (Hope you remember, again referring to the tenure of SP and BSP governments) made a deep impact on the subconscious of the voters,” stated a strategist who played a key role in designing this campaign, but preferred not being named.
‘SILENT’ MODI VOTERS
According to another party leader, the fact that there has now emerged a nationwide trend of at least 8%-10% silent voters that vote for BJP, was being ignored by every observer. “This 10% is the ‘Modi voters’, the ‘beneficiary voters’ and in many states, they have proven to be the deciding factor, including in Uttarakhand. These 10% silent voters, spread across communities, caste, region, linguistic barriers, are those people who are ‘scared’, ‘shy’ and do not show their voting preference to any pollster, media or political representatives. These are the voters who are at the lowest of economic strata and do not care about issues like bulldozer, mandir or topi. They are impacted by the ration card, which is perhaps the most dynamic example of our narrative of susasan (good governance) that ensures—without any fail and without any pleading—that they don’t sleep on a hungry stomach. You don’t need to go and tell them that this has happened because of the Modi government, it is something that they are themselves experiencing first hand. These silent voters who reside in remote, rural areas or in areas in towns where the media and pollsters don’t go, have very basic expectations which we have been able to provide. It is these chunks that saved us in Uttar Pradesh and in Uttarakhand. These 10% Modi voters had only one thing in mind, to press ‘Kamal’ (Lotus symbol of BJP) to make Modi win,” the strategist said.
The BJP leader said that the impact of the pro-poor approach and the last mile delivery that the Modi government had been undertaking was yet to be taken into account by the media. “Look at the massive number of votes that we have got in the two seats of Sahibabad and Noida, both largely urban seats. Our vote share clearly shows that people cutting across all barriers have voted for the Lotus symbol. What made them do that? My simple answer is the road connectivity that we have provided through the expressways which has eliminated the problems that were faced by people living in these two places daily while traveling from one place to another. Voters remember. These wins could not have happened or been denied by any opposition party just by doing an ‘effective caste’ politics. Yet the media does not bring this out,” the party leader said. In Sahibabad, the party candidate got 3.22 lakh or 67% of the votes; while in Noida the candidate got 2.44 lakh or 70% of the votes.
LAW AND ORDER, VACCINATION
According to another leader, the sense of security that the BJP government under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath provided, cannot be just understood through encounters and bulldozing of buildings belonging to the mafia. “This sense of security should also be understood when you see cabs parked on Noida roads at night, waiting for their bookings or women out shopping even at 9 pm along with their children. People are not afraid to call the police helpline number in distress as they know that they will arrive and take timely action. These are small changes that the government brought in the last five years which helped us in crossing 202, and battling the anger against the representatives of the party,” a Union minister said.
The state and central governments’ focus on vaccinating as many people as they could, at their own cost, too helped the BJP electorally, a point that is yet to become a talking point as one of the many reasons that helped the BJP. “Free vaccinations were given to each eligible member of the household at his or her convenience. The people were aware that the same vaccine was being bought by the ‘affluent’ people for Rs 1,000-Rs 1,500. A household that had five voters realised that it was saving Rs 10,000 (for two doses for five people), which others were paying for the vaccine. So this generated goodwill among the people for PM Modi,” the party leaders quoting a set of survey documents said.
INCLUSIVE HINDUTVA
As per the feedback on which the party formalised its campaigning, the building of Kashi Corridor, which was inaugurated in December 2021, had generated a lot of goodwill among the voters who were not “BJP minded”. “Please understand that the Kashi Corridor was presented by the Prime Minister as an example of how religion, culture and commerce can benefit the people. Kashi Corridor is a Hindu religious subject, but it was not presented as a ‘communal’ project, but a commercial-religious project that will change the lives of people staying near it. PM Modi’s ‘Hindutva’ is not far-right, rabid, communal; it is about taking along everyone so that people can prosper. The ‘communal’ Hindu voters are there, but their collective strength is less, but since they are vocal they appear larger. They cannot help BJP in any election beyond a point, PM Modi’s all-inclusive Hindutva is what adds to our existing vote bank and creates the difference in the end,” he added.
MICRO-MANAGEMENT
Giving an example of how campaigning was micro-managed by Sunil Bansal, who wove a team of capable individuals to handle the campaigning, the party leader said that party workers, leaders of specific castes were called to Uttar Pradesh from states like Bihar, Gujarat and Maharashtra and then they were sent to villages and blocks on the basis of the caste composition of that area.
“For example, a leader of Bihar who belongs to ‘X’ caste, was sent to a village where the maximum voters were from his caste so that community outreach is more effectively executed due to caste affinity. Seats were analysed and by November, we knew which caste leaders will go where,” he said.
The party, very few are aware, was running a call centre from which calls were made to voters and party workers seeking their demands, complaints. “We took feedback from the horse’s mouth. This helped us get genuine feedback from the ground regarding what the challenges were for us and what we needed to work on,” he said. The call centre made its first call in August.
CHALLENGES THE PARTY FACED
The BJP leaders listed unemployment and inflation as one of the two local level challenges that they faced. “No doubt unemployment was an issue on the ground, but it did not disturb us as much as it could have because of two things—one, a fact-based perception that if the SP comes to power, then jobs will go only to a few communities and castes, and secondly, the trust that voters have in PM Modi. The voters, despite being upset over the lack of more employment opportunities, trusted us that jobs will come and it will not be pocketed by a few as it had happened during the time of SP,” the strategist quoted earlier said.
The fact that teachers and government officers were not too happy with the state government for different reasons was accepted by the BJP strategists and according to them, this was a factor that they missed on taking into account while strategising.
“In many seats the postal ballot (that are cast by government teachers, government employees) is more in support of the opposition parties than our candidates. Even in the seat of Gorakhpur Urban from where Adityanath won, the postal ballot the SP candidate got is just 116 lower than what the sitting CM and someone as popular as Adityanath got. In many booths across the state, the names of pro BJP voters were missing from the voters’ list, as a result of which we have suffered a loss of about 2,000-5,000 votes on each seat. Who prepares the voter list? The state government employees do. This is something that hurt us and could have hurt us fatally,” he added.