How the BJP plans to defeat its "enemy number one" Nitish Kumar
As he dunked his roti in the arhar ki daal at BJP Leader CP Thakur's Patna residence on January 23, BJP President Amit Shah broached a subject that nobody sharing the dining table with him expected he would. "Tell me what happened in 2010? How did Nitish Kumar cancel the dinner?"
On his maiden visit to Bihar, BJP president had just addressed a well-attended rally, held to commemorate backward caste icon Karpoori Thakur's birth anniversary. At lunch, everyone may have expected their party boss to talk about future, about the October assembly polls. About strategies. But, as tongue often returns to a sore tooth to caress, Amit Shah could not forget discussing the cancelled dinner that perhaps still haunts every man in saffron. It was in June 2010, when the then coalition partner Nitish Kumar - incensed at the publication of full-page advertisement carrying his photograph with Narendra Modi, palms clutched and held aloft - had withdrawn his dinner invitation to BJP leaders, who were in Patna for party's national executive. Nitish even returned the Rs five crore help that the government of Gujarat had given to Bihar for Kosi victims.
It was the worst humiliation for the party with a difference. But, the BJP swallowed it to save the coalition with Nitish. The move yielded good results, as the BJP won a won a massive majority in 2010 assembly polls, an election where Narendra Modi was not invited to campaign apparently at Nitish Kumar's prodding.
Though Shah was not part of the BJP's June 2010 national executive at Patna, his mentor Narendra Modi was the cause of the dinner cancellation. Before Shah's private probing, Narendra Modi had spoken about it publicly in his October 2013 Patna Hunkar Rally, his first in Bihar after Nitish Kumar broke the BJP-JD-U alliance in June 2013. Who is the most difficult political opponent that the BJP can have? A man who can do more social engineering than the entire BJP pack in Bihar? An ungrateful friend-turned-foe that BJP is longing most to decimate? A crafty, obstinate, cussed, indomitable, untrustworthy opponent? A man who can cause BJP more harm than Arvind Kejriwal? The saffron men may well tick all those boxes to describe Nitish Kumar.
Nitish Kumar, who began his fourth stint as Bihar chief minister on February 22, is acutely aware of the depth of dislike that the BJP may have for him. Having briefly shaken hands with Narendra Modi at the wedding of Lalu Prasad's youngest daughter, Raj Laxmi, with Mulayam Singh Yadav's grandnephew Tej Pratap on February 26, and thanked Union finance minister Arun Jaitley for proposing special assistance to Bihar, Nitish is back to his unsparing best against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
At a JD-U worker's meet held on March 1, his birthday, Nitish played audio tapes to "expose" the prime minister's "proclivity" to thrive on "lies" and "falsehood". The tapes were of earlier speeches where Modi promised to bring back black money parked by Indians in foreign banks and "gift" Rs 15 to 20 lakh into everyone's account.
The BJP too has set in motion a meticulous election strategy for Bihar -bigger than the party's Lok Sabha blitzkrieg that had helped it ramp up its 2009 vote share of 13.93 per cent in Bihar to 29.86 per cent in 2014. With BJP's 22 seats, the NDA had walked away with 31 of Bihar's 40 seats in the 2014 general elections.
Now, the BJP is doing it one step at a time. The overall poll strategy is spaced across time intervals and specific periods with a clear demarcation about what is to be done when and how. "Now, from February to April, our focus would be on enrolling 75 lakh members. Once this is done, we will be asking each of the new members to enrol a friend or family member," he said.
At the parallel level, a different team has already mapped Bihar's 59,807 polling stations. It has exact details about the number of votes that party bagged at these booths during earlier elections. The booths have also been categorised under three broad categories - won by BJP with exact margin, lost by BJP with exact margin and those where close contests have been witnessed. The BJP database is so comprehensive and full of micro details that someone sitting in Patna would know which family in which constituency has more than a dozen votes.
To stay ahead of Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav, both known as crafty social engineers, the BJP strategists have already prepared a caste census of their own from gleaning information from the voter lists. Voters based on their titles (family names like Ram, Mahto, Verma, Sharma, Singh, Tewari, etc) have been placed under different caste categories. It will help the party prepare its horses for the courses. "In poll-bound Bihar where everything melts down to caste, we will also depute upper caste or OBC leaders in areas dominated by their caste men," said a senior party leader.
For sheer operational reasons, the party is also holding its fire against Nitish Kumar-and Lalu Prasad. Even now, when Nitish Kumar has come out all guns blazing against the prime minister, playing his speeches and deriding him for making false promises to the electorates, the BJP response seems just academic in nature with Bihar leader Sushil Modi throwing number to counter Nitish Kumar's claim that Bihar will lose out heavily on account of the 14th Finance Commission recommendations.
The undeclared "go slow on Lalu-Nitish" will continue till July-August after which the BJP will switch gears. "The idea is not to dissipate people with slogans and allegations. We will begin our anti-Nitish and anti-Lalu campaign just at the right time so that it remained etched in voters' conscience till the last vote is polled," said a senior BJP leader.
"Nitish Kumar has been playing Narendra Modi's election speeches at his meetings to convey that BJP government has not fulfilled its promises. We will also play Nitish Kumar videos, including his famous poetic attack on Lalu Prasad prior to 2010 assembly polls. The focus will on how two selfish politicians have compromised and joined hands for their own survival; and not for public good," said a senior BJP leader, privy to the strategy. As elections are fast approaching making the politicians' palms to perspire, battles lines are drawn in Bihar.