Nine days after Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani embarked on his Bharat Uday Yatra, Bharatiya Janata Party leaders are confronted with a peculiar reality -- cricket fever can upset even the most shrewdly calibrated election campaigns.
Political parties are either re-scheduling or canceling poll meetings as the India-Pakistan cricket series leads to poor turnouts at election rallies.
Last Saturday, when the India-Pakistan series commenced in Karachi, Advani travelled from Bangalore to Shimoga, addressing a number of meetings. A BJP leader closely involved with the Bharat Uday Yatra confessed to this correspondent that the turnout was "depressing."
"Cricket in India is bigger than politics. It is a fact that people want to see Sachin Tendulkar rather than Advaniji," the BJP leader confided.
In the small Karnataka towns Advani travelled through -- Neelamangla, Kunigul, Arsikere and Birur -- not many people turned up to greet Advani, he added.
By Tuesday, when the second one-day match was played in Rawalpindi, the BJP had grown wiser. Local party leaders treated crowds to the telecast of the game at venues like Bidar and Zahirabad before Advani arrived.
The India team's schedule in Pakistan -- March 11 to April 17 -- almost coincides with Advani's yatra, which runs from March 10 to April 14.
"Advaniji's yatra will continue despite the cricket," BJP vice-president Pyarelal Khandelwal said.
"The India-Pakistan matches are a great show, but it does not mean that people are not attending election meetings," the senior BJP leader pointed out in a telephone interview from his office in New Delhi.
"Our assessment is that the Bharat Uday Yatra is equally a crowd-puller like the India-Pakistan matches," Khandelwal told rediff.com on Thursday. "This is the season for politics and cricket."
It is not the BJP alone that is combating cricket mania. The Congress party is looking at rescheduling Sonia Gandhi's campaign rallies to ensure that her travels across the country do not clash with the India-Pakistan games.
On March 16, when India and Pakistan played at Rawalpindi, Gandhi did not travel out of Delhi to campaign. Her schedule for the one-day matches on March 19, 21 and 24 has not been finalised so far.
Gandhi is scheduled to tour Chhattisgarh on Friday, when the Indian team plays Pakistan in Peshawar. But Congress leaders fear poor attendance during the road show.
"During the first match, Congress workers were more interested in watching Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi in Karachi," quipped a Congress campaign manager at the party headquarters in New Delhi. The Gandhi siblings and Priyanka's husband Robert Vadra travelled to Karachi to watch the match.
"We are looking at the timings of the India-Pakistan matches. We will reschedule Gandhi's meetings if need be," the Congress leader added.
