Cover Story: BJP: Party: Scoring Plans

The challenge before the party is to translate the post-Kargil goodwill for Vajpayee into vote.

The BJP's biggest problem in this general election could be the fact that it has already peaked. The challenge before the BJP is to translate the post-Kargil goodwill for Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the party into votes. The basic fear is that the party has peaked in many areas. In a decade when traditional political parties have either splintered or lost ground to regional formations the BJP has been growing steadily. From 86 Lok Sabha seats and 11.5 per cent of the vote share in 1989, the party today has the largest bloc of 182 seats and 25.59 per cent of the vote share, touching the Congress' share of 25.82 per cent.

In each general election since 1989 the party has added anything from 20 to 40 Lok Sabha seats to its tally. In doing so the BJP has defied conventional wisdom by stretching its social umbrella way beyond the Bania-Brahmin core to include the lower castes. In geographical terms too the party's spread has been impressive: it has opened its account in the east and is actually a contender for power in one of the southern states. Little wonder the party, once shunned as untouchable, today has a row of leaders knocking on its door.

WHAT THE BJP NEEDS TO DO

REGAIN SEATS Although the BJP increased its tally to 182 in 1998, it lost 54 seats it held in 1996. Of these, five were in Bihar, three in Haryana, one in Karnataka, five in Madhya Pradesh, 14 in Maharashtra, 10 in Rajasthan, 15 in Uttar Pradesh and one in Assam. To hope for an outright majority for the National Democratic Alliance, the BJP must try and win back a bulk of these seats.
HOLD THE MARGINALS
There are 99 seats where the margin of BJP victory in 1998 was less than 10 per cent. Uttar Pradesh accounted for 40 of these, Madhya Pradesh 19, Bihar nine, Gujarat six, Karnataka five and Maharashtra and Rajasthan four each. Intensive campaigning in these seats is a must.

TARGET THE ENEMY
There were 80 seats that the BJP lost by less than 10 per cent in 1998. Uttar Pradesh accounted for 20, Maharashtra and Rajasthan 10 each, Madhya Pradesh eight, Bihar seven and Gujarat five. An offensive campaign must focus on these.
DIVIDE THE OPPOSITION
If the Congress expects to lose votes in Maharashtra to Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party, the BJP is fearful of an anti-incumbency vote in Uttar Pradesh. To keep its Hindi heartland tally intact, it must ensure that the Congress and BSP don't team up and that Muslim votes of the Samajwadi Party go in small measure to the Congress. For its own sake, the BJP has to keep a third front alive.

The question now is, where does the BJP go from here? Bolstered claims of mustering a simple majority are an integral part of electionspeak. But honest, hard-nosed internal assessments put the seat projection at 215 to 220 -- if all goes according to plan. This would be a gain of 30 to 40 seats, possible only because the opposition vote is divided in the two states where there is disenchantment with the BJP. Uttar Pradesh, where the party may lose just a couple of its 57 seats because the anti-BJP vote is getting more divided with the Congress likely to stage a minor comeback. And Maharashtra, where the formation of a splinter Congress by Sharad Pawar has been a life-saver for the discredited BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. Says BJP legislator Prakash Jawdekar: "The vertical split of the Congress will benefit us." BJP's strongman in Maharashtra, Pramod Mahajan believes the biggest gains will be made in Rajasthan and Maharashtra, where the party faced unexpected setbacks in the 1998 polls.

But BJP strategists admit there are two danger marks for the party: a possible Congress-BSP tie-up in Uttar Pradesh which would be formidable and further reverses in Madhya Pradesh, where Congress Chief Minister Digvijay Singh's fortunes have been on an upswing since he won a second term in the assembly polls last November.

The party is also beset with the usual set of problems in the states. In Uttar Pradesh a large number of MLAs and ministers remain opposed to Chief Minister Kalyan Singh. In Punjab, where the party is the junior partner in an alliance with the Akalis, the state unit President Daya Singh Sodhi has had repeated run-ins with the Badal Government, putting a strain on the arrangement. In Madhya Pradesh the BJP is a divided house with senior leader Sunderlal Patwa ranged against various minority groups. Dissidence and factionalism now take their toll in every state unit of the party. But there still remains a subtle difference in the manner the cadre-based, ideology-driven party handles such worldly problems. Partymen still retain the discipline to set aside their differences for a larger cause. In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, BJP General Secretary K.N. Govindacharya was recently successful in convincing the anti- and pro-Kalyan factions to downplay their differences till the completion of the general elections.

There are other obvious advantages of being a cadre-driven party. Most of the 40,000 RSS shakhas and one million active Sangh Parivar members work for the BJP candidates in their areas. General Secretary Narendra Modi points out that the BJP is the only party that conducts training camps for its polling agents. "We have evolved a thorough system down to the polling booth. We have the figures at every polling booth in a particular constituency. We are the masters of booth management," he says.

BJP SAYS	RSS SAYS
ECONOMICS: Liberalise foreign investments further and step up public-sector disinvestment.	ECONOMICS: Offer protection to indigenous industry and maintain the importance of the public sector.
FOREIGN POLICY: Keep up the pressure on Pakistan using the US. Sign the CTBT as quid pro quo.	FOREIGN POLICY: Keep the military heat on Pakistan but no US mediation, no CTBT. Maintain anti-West position.
BORDERS: Move towards accepting Line of Control as international border with Pakistan.	BORDERS: Absolutely no compromise on 1996 Lok Sabha resolution claiming PoK. Akhand Bharat is the ultimate goal.
MINORITIES: Shelve all contentious issues like Ayodhya and uniform civil code. Retain status quo in Kashmir.	MINORITIES: Use official patronage to spread Hindu nationalism in education. Trigger a debate on the civil code.

During the presidentship of L.K. Advani the BJP was perhaps at its most vibrant. Since then the party has grown by leaps and bounds with membership drives being routinely undertaken in various states. President Kushabhau Thakre lacks the ability to capture the average workers' imagination but he is a formidable organiser who has been travelling tirelessly to build the party structure in far-flung areas. By the time the elections are over, Thakre would have visited close to 250 constituencies and interacted with the grassroots BJP workers there.

It is the army of such workers across the country that make it possible for the BJP to maximise its potential. Though Vajpayee is the party's vote-winning mascot and Thakre the president, Advani remains the main strategist and ideologue. As head of the party's campaign committee Advani has, with characteristic patience and eye for the smallest detail, been taking decisions on every aspect of the campaign. As Modi puts it: "Hamare yudh ke rathi woh hi hain. Mahabharata mein Krishna the. Yahan Lal Krishna hain (Advani is the charioteer who is driving us out to battle. In the Mahabharata this was done by Lord Krishna. The BJP has Lal Krishna)."

As the party machinery gears up for the polls, instructions have been given to workers to make it a Vajpayee versus Sonia Gandhi contest. While the top BJP leadership will refrain from attacking the Congress president personally, the party cadres will launch a scathing attack on the Gandhi bahu. With the party choosing to downplay Hindutva, Kargil has come as a handy issue to fire the imagination of the average worker. With patriotism on an upsurge Sonia's foreign origin becomes only too stark. Says BJP campaign committee member Arun Jaitley: "Pit Sonia against Vajpayee and in every sphere the BJP leader scores. Sonia has made so many mistakes that in the last six months she increasingly seems a non-option. She has neither the articulation nor the experience to match a veteran like Vajpayee." To strategy, management and arithmetic, the BJP plans to inject a hefty dose of nationalist chemistry.

STATE SATRAPS At the regional level, new faces are gradually emerging in the BJP, breaking new ground and forging caste alignments without abandoning traditional political values.
KALYAN SINGH: Backward clout RSS man, he has built a backward vote bank and added to the Brahmin-Bania base in Uttar Pradesh. His poor performance could cost the BJP some crucial seats.	GOPINATH MUNDE: Future hope The party's face in Maharashtra, his job is to salvage it from the debris of the alliance with the Shiv Sena. A tribal, he symbolises the new, go-getting BJP.	SUNDERLAL PATWA: Never say die After two failures in assembly elections , he has been sidelined in Madhya Pradesh but maintains a strong presence. A powerful speaker, he provokes factional antipathy.
SUSHIL MODI: Clean guy His strength is his image and record of opposition to Laloo in Bihar. A backward-class leader, he can play caste politics without compromising on RSS basics.	B. YEDIYURAPPA: Farmer leader Responsible for building the BJP's rural base in Karnataka, he is set to reap the returns in the assembly elections. Angered by induction of JD in the alliance.	KESHUBHAI PATEL: Past his prime A second-term chief minister, he is dogged by ill health and charges of non-performance. Remains one of BJP's foremost farmer-leaders. Has to cope with dissidence.

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