In a matter of days, the door-to-door BJP campaigners’ tone in Ayodhya has gone from preening to pleading.
“Ram ke vote deo na toh Ramji haar jaihen. BJP chhodo, ihan Ram ke badnami hoi (Vote for Ram, else Ram will lose. Not just the BJP but Ram will get a bad name),” voters of the Faizabad constituency, where Ayodhya falls, are being implored.
This is days after they were told it would be a privilege for them to “participate” in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inevitable triumph by voting for him.
“Modiji ko awe se kauno rok na sakat hai. Apahun ome apan yogdan do (Nobody can stop Modiji from coming to power. You too participate in it).”
Political observers believe that all isn’t well with the BJP at Hindutva’s Ground Zero, and this is why Modi is arriving on Sunday — 15 days before the polling — for
a road show.
“Normally, road shows by the senior-most leaders of a party are held three or four days before the election. But suddenly, the most powerful people in the government are visiting Ayodhya many days before polling,” a politics lecturer at a local degree college said.
Seeking anonymity, he added: “A large number of BJP workers are uninterested in campaigning. The RSS cadre, extremely active here in 2014 and 2019, remains elusive — they are neither going door to door nor meeting BJP workers.”
T.N. Tiwari, a local political analyst, said: “Amit Maurya, the Devakali Mandal BJP booth president in Ayodhya district, committed suicide on May 20, 2021, after facing police harassment during the construction of his house. BJP leaders didn’t help him and he threw himself on a railway track. Since then, many booth-level BJP workers and leaders have withdrawn from party activities.
“The euphoria of the Ram temple is subsiding, too. About 2 lakh devotees visited the temple every day after the (January 22) consecration; only 20,000 come nowadays.”
Lallu Singh of the BJP is seeking a third consecutive term from Faizabad. The BJP holds four of the five Assembly segments, but local wisdom has it that Lallu enjoys the support only of Daryabad MLA Satish Sharma.
The party MLAs from Rudauli, Bikapur and Ayodhya seem unhappy — if not with Lallu, certainly with chief minister Yogi Adityanath whom they and their peers accuse of disempowering them by wielding direct control over the bureaucracy and police.
The fifth MLA, Awadhesh Prasad of the Samajwadi Party (Milkipur), is the INDIA nominee against Lallu. The caste equations seem to be with him.
One of the reasons has been the fear generated among Dalit, tribal and OBC voters that if the BJP wins a huge majority, it would amend the Constitution to abolish reservations.
Ironically, Lallu had himself fanned these fears by purportedly declaring, at a meeting in the second week of April, that the BJP and allies needed over 400 seats “to change the Constitution”.
Lallu later claimed the video of his speech was an edited one. But the controversy forced Modi to drop his “400-plus” cry and rush to deny, along with Union home minister Amit Shah, that the BJP would ever change the Constitution.
“Losing the Faizabad seat will be a real humiliation for the BJP and Modiji because Ayodhya is part of it. This is probably why the Prime Minister has suddenly decided to hold a road show here,” Awadhesh Mishra, a BJP worker, said.
“President Droupadi Murmu rushed to Ayodhyaon Wednesday and Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami participated in a 9km road show with Lallu before the MP filed hisnomination.”
Lallu denied any sense of insecurity, saying: “The Prime Minister’s road show of May 5 was expected since long back. He’ll also offer prayers at the Ram temple.”
But the BJP’s nervousness was underlined on April 30 when the central government-appointed Ram temple trust felt the need to contradict Rahul’s claim that President Murmu had not been invited to the January 22 consecration because she comes from a tribal community.
“Rahul Gandhi’s statement is untrue, baseless and confusing. We want to remind him that respected Droupadi Murmu and former President Ramnath Kovind (a Dalit) were both invited on this occasion,” the trust said ina statement.
“Many saints and people from… the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes were invited.”
On Sunday, Modi will worship at the Ram temple and then lead a 1.9km road show. Forty cultural groups from various states have been hired to perform on both sides ofthe road.
