Conflicting ground reports about the fortunes of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the first five phases of the Uttar Pradesh polls, followed by a conversation with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s senior office-bearer Dattatreya Hosabale on February 28, prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take a last-minute decision to devote three days to campaigning in Varanasi, said a senior BJP leader and a member of the Modi government.
Modi was in the area from March 4 to March 6, putting on three road shows and addressing a public rally. The last phase of the Uttar Pradesh election will be held on Wednesday.
The decision to spend such a long time in the constituency that he represents in Parliament intrigued both his rivals as well as leaders of the BJP, since it came towards the end of the campaign in the state.
While Opposition parties have claimed that Modi’s long stay in Varanasi showed his lack of confidence even in his own parliamentary constituency, BJP leaders have insisted that this was only meant as final push to secure an absolute majority in the crucial state.
According to a senior BJP leader, the two assessment reports – one by the party and the other by the Intelligence Bureau – differed vastly on the BJP’s performance in the first five phases of UP Assembly election. While the party’s report painted a favourable picture, the one by the Intelligence Bureau was more negative.
This led Modi on February 28 to seek a report directly from Dattatreya, the RSS’ joint general secretary who has been acting virtually as the BJP’s central figure in Uttar Pradesh. He has been directing the party’s hierarchy of office-bearers ever since he shifted his base from Patna to Lucknow last March.
This was considered unconventional, because RSS reports usually go first to the party general secretary in-charge of the organisaiton (Ram Lal presently holds this post), and then – if required – they move to the prime minister through the party president.
Even as he was doing this, Modi also sought a ground report from the group of his close aides, who are mostly from Gujarat and are mainly focusing on his parliamentary seat.
Urgent steps suggested
Though the RSS report, which was sent to the prime minister on March 1, did not mention the number of seats the BJP might win, it did say that the party’s performance until then had not been good enough to propel it to power, the BJP leader said. He added that Modi’s aides from Varanasi also suggested that unless some urgent steps were taken, the party might not be able to win more than two out of five Assembly seats in Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency.
In the outgoing Assembly, the BJP has three seats from Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency – Varanasi North, Varanasi South and Varanasi Cantonment.
“The two reports just before the last two phases of the state election led the prime minister to take the last-minute decision to rework on the campaign strategy for the remaining seats and camp for three consecutive days in Varanasi, where he held constant road-shows and rallies,” the BJP leader pointed out.
BJP president Amit Shah, who was at the helm of party’s Uttar Pradesh strategy, was brought in the loop only after the prime minister had obtained the reports from the RSS and his own aides in Varanasi and taken the decision to camp in his constituency.
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