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BJP pulls out the regional card in Delhi

George Iype in New Delhi

Fearing defeat in the November assembly election in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership has chalked out a detailed plan to target caste and linguistic groups in these states.

BJP leaders admit that the party will be able to retain Delhi only if there is a change of strategy to attract different linguistic groups. "Delhi is a cosmopolitan city and more than 50 per cent of its voters are from various states. Therefore, our utmost priority is to woo them over," a BJP functionary told Rediff On The NeT.

"The party leadership feels the responsibility to lure regional voters in Delhi is not on Chief Minister Sushma Swaraj alone," he added.

Though Punjabis are the dominant community in Delhi, the other major vote-banks include Keralites, Tamils, Telugus, Bengalis, Oriyas, Kannadigas and Kashmiris.

Therefore, the BJP leadership has divided the electioneering workload in Delhi among its members of Parliament from the states.

Thus while Minister of State for Urban Development Bandaru Dattatreya has been given the charge of cultivating the Telugu voters in the capital, Civil Aviation Minister Ananth Kumar will take care of the Kannadigas.

Keralites and Tamils, who form a large group in the city, will be wooed by Rajya Sabha member O Rajagopal and Coimbatore MP Radhakrishnan respectively.

While Rajya Sabha member Ram Kapse is in charge of Maharashtrians, Minister for Textiles Kashiram Rana will ask for Gujarati votes.

Similarly, while Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister P K Dhumal will actively campaign to target the voters from his state in Delhi, the task to get the largest chunk of Punjabi voters has been entrusted to Parliamentary Affairs Minister Madan Lal Khurana and Rajya Sabha member Vijay Kumar Malhotra.

At an election committee meeting conveyed by BJP president Shashikant 'Kushabhau' Thakre on Thursday, the party leadership decided to prepare separate poll manifestos for different states and also put the Hindutva and Ram temple issues on the backburner.

The meeting, attended by top BJP leaders including Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Home Minister Lal Kishinchand Advani, also resolved to entrust key party functionaries with the responsibility to woo linguistic minorities, especially in Delhi.

Party sources say the plan to recast the Delhi election strategy has been forced by the rivalry between Khurana and ousted chief minister Sahib Singh Verma.

"Verma's removal as chief minister has considerably upset jat voters in Delhi's rural areas. We do not feel confident that the new chief minister will be able to bring them back to the party," one Delhi BJP leader in the Verma camp said.

The Jat Mahasabha, organised recently to protest against Verma's removal, had come out strongly against the BJP leadership, warning that "jats are not bonded voters of the BJP".

But Venkaiah Naidu, BJP general secretary in charge of Delhi, denies that the linguistic strategy is because the party is losing ground in the city. "In every election, we target the linguistic groups in Delhi because they are crucial for the success or failure of any party," he told Rediff On The NeT.

He said for this election, the BJP leadership has decided to deploy its regional leaders for campaigning among the voters from other states not only in Delhi. "We will campaign actively for the tribal and scheduled caste voters in states like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh," Naidu said.

The party leadership is said to be worried that the vaishya community, like the jats, has also drifted away from the BJP in the past months. Recently, the All India Vaishya Mahasammelan came out with a statement criticising the Vajpayee government. The community is said to be a crucial vote bank in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

In the latter state, the BJP leadership tried to woo the Bishnois by protesting against the alleged shooting of black bucks by film star Salman Khan. The community holds away in at least 10 assembly constituencies in the state.

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