By M H Ahssan | INNLIVE Bureau
ELECTION ANALYSIS The Aam Admi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal was brilliant tactically in going after Narendra Modi in Varanasi. He has got media coverage for being brave enough to challenge Modi in a Lok Sabha seat that the Bharatiya Janata Party considers itself well placed.
On the other hand Varanasi, a small town with a small town’s conservatism, is a place in which the Aam Admi Party has no presence. It has neither a large organisation there, nor has it the community that it built in Delhi through its long agitation. So it is probable that Kejriwal will put up a good fight against Modi but will lose.
That is good tactics and, as I said, he is getting media attention for doing it this way. In fact it is possible and perhaps even likely that he will end up second on that seat, which is remarkable given how Uttar Pradesh’s population has stubbornly stuck to voting along caste or religious lines all these decades.
To break through these loyalties and pull voters away from the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party will be quite an achievement. However, Kejriwal made a strategic mistake in not fighting from in and around Delhi, where his party has a presence. In fact, he could have done this in addition to contesting from Varanasi but for some reason he chose not to.
He may not have got as much media attention as he has in taking on Modi directly, but on the other hand he would have won. And this would have made him without doubt one of the most important elements in the new Lok Sabha. Given his vocal and aggressive style, he could have made the AAP punch far above its weight in Parliament.
This is especially so given how weak the Congress is going to be. The Congress ranks are totally depleted in terms of good speakers whether or not the party does poorly in the election. None of its three senior members - Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and Chidambaram - is contesting, for various reasons. Other senior ministers are also too afraid to fight. This gives the BJP, particularly if it gets 200 seats or more, total dominance of the Lok Sabha.
There are very few people one can think of who will be able to stand up to Modi in Parliament and Kejriwal could have been the man to do this. Kejriwal has a street-fighting air that the Congress lacks entirely and would have made Modi wary of him. When Kejriwal did his lightning tour of Gujarat a few weeks ago and came up with a list of claims, Modi did not respond.
The list included some very specific allegations on the fabled Gujarat Model and separated the chaff from the wheat. I sense much of those "facts" were either off or exaggerated, but even so Modi himself did not take on Kejriwal. It was the Gujarat government that came up with a rebuttal, which got a fraction of the publicity that Kejriwal’s charges had got.
Someone like Kejriwal who is persistent and has more tenacity (and some would say more credibility) than the Gandhis, Modi will always stay away from. Modi is more comfortable pummeling soft targets like Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. Priyanka is different, which is why Modi was wary of her also (apparently referring to her as his daughter), but she is only incidental to the election.
The Congress matriarch in particular is very polite and for years never even referred to the BJP directly, choosing to address them obliquely through "unko" and "unhonein" when she spoke in Hindi. This will not work against Modi, who in Gujarat has shown contempt for the legislature, choosing to work through the bureaucracy instead, but who cannot do the same in Delhi, where legislation will be as if not more important than 'governance'.
Modi will need to put in work in the Lok Sabha and robust engagement with him on his ideas is critical. With Kejriwal unlikely to be there, this will become tougher for the opposition.
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