NEW DELHI: After Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandra Babu Naidu's initiatives to put together some semblance of an Opposition unity, the BJP appears to have initiated a subtle campaign to build the 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign around the persona of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Moreover, a poll campaign focused on Modi will dim the focus on the NDA government's performance in the last five years.
Though Naidu portrayed his meetings with heads of the Congress and regional outfits with the rationale that the country needs to be saved from the ruling party, the BJP strategists see the move evolving into a "Modi versus All" campaign in 2019.
BJP chief Amit Shah is known to hold the view that any Opposition unity theoretically may mean that the saffron outfit will run into a single opponent in Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Karnataka at the most. On paper, the BJP doesn't see any significant change in the matrix of electoral contest from what was seen in 2014.
To blunt the Opposition unity's edge, Shah has tasked the party satraps in Uttar Pradesh to lay the road map for 50 per cent plus vote share in the state. In Bihar, the BJP-JD(U)-LJP block had together got about 55 per cent vote share five years ago.
"The BJP will prefer to contest the Lok Sabha election on the development agenda. But if the Opposition chooses to make it the BJP versus All, the campaign invariably will boil down around the persona of Modi. With the Congress as the anchor of the Opposition unity as hinted by Naidu during his Delhi presser a few days ago, the country may see the 2019 theme evolving into a Modi versus Rahul Gandhi, or uncertainty about the Opposition face. The BJP has begun holding programmes to steer the 2019 campaign around Modi," said a senior BJP functionary, who's overseeing the poll preparations.
Within the BJP, it's accepted that a host of social welfare schemes entitling the poor with benefits helped the party gain acceptance among other and extremely backward castes. Yet, the spectre of unemployment unnerves the BJP since the number of youth voters continues to rise. The BJP strategists claim that a personality-oriented campaign will dim attention on the performance front of the NDA government.