JAIPUR: The BJP in Rajasthan is focusing on the failures of the Central Government, in order to tide over the anti-incumbency feeling among the electorate against its Government in Rajasthan.
The failure of the Centre to check price rise and the development agenda of the Vasundhara Raje Government are the two main issues highlighted by the BJP. The party is also comparing the non-performance of the Ashok Gehlot government in 1998-2003 with the achievements of the Raje Government. Terror, whether Hindu or Muslim, is missing from the campaign of the BJP, though earlier it had planned to make it a major issue in the polls.
The personal onslaught mounted against Raje has rattled the BJP, which claims her style of functioning and her interactions with the general masses are working to the advantage of the party. ‘‘They will have to pay a heavy price for this as she is our trump card,” remarked BJP general secretary incharge of Rajasthan Gopinath Munde.
Munde, along with BJP spokesperson Prakash Javdekar, are managing the party campaign in Rajasthan. Significantly, Vasundhara interacts with Munde and Javadekar in Marathi. Countering the Congress campaign, Munde stated that the Chief Minister’s biggest achievement is the development of roads and providing electricity in every village of the State.
The BJP’s rath with posters of Raje in the middle and photographs of former prime minister A B Vajpayee, NDA Prime Minister candidate L K Advani, BJP president Rajasthan Singh and Rajasthan BJP president Om Prakash Mathur around, are being taken to ev ery nook and corner of the State. Street plays projecting the failures of the Congress Government at the Centre are being staged in a big way.
The BJP poll campaign was kickstarted by organising a workers’ convention in Jaipur recently. The party workers vowed to make the party victorious in the State.
Meanwhile, the Congress is carefully reworking its strategies in order to wrest the political initiative from the ruling BJP. The AICC is overseeing the new strategy of galvanising the party at the grassroots level.
As many as 100 AICC observers have been selected and each one of them has been given charge of two Assembly constituencies. The target given to each observer is to raise the party vote share by at least 10 percent so that the party gets strengthened at the constituency level. The observer has to work with the grassroots level workers and woo segments and castes which would add to the party’s existing vote share.
The Congress has pressed into service parliamentary party chief whip Madhusudhan Mistry and AICC secretary Vivek Bansal besides Avinash Pandey for media coordination and Mohan Prakash as party spokesman.
The Congress has fielded 90 new faces out of the 200 candidates for the Assembly elections. Most of the 70-plus leaders have been denied ticket this time round.
However, considering their seniority, they were allowed to nominate their kin in order to bring in new faces into the electoral contest.
A senior Congress functionary explained that this was the reason why several tickets were given to relatives of senior leaders, like former Chief Minister Jagannath Pahadia’s son Sanjay air, former Deputy Chief Minister Kamla’s son Alok, Union Minister Sish Ram Ola’s son Vijayender and Parasram Maderna’s son Mahipal.
