NEW DELHI: Battered by Bihar and Delhi debacles, Team Amit Shah is keeping fingers crossed for redemption from the outcome of the five state Assembly elections. Apparently not expecting much hope from Punjab, the team Amit Shah is hoping to win rest of the four states to come back on the winning path to stay on course for a number of states lining up for polls later this year and in 2018.
With the 2015 Bihar verdict still haunting the core members of the team Amit Shah, the BJP leaders are pinning hope on Uttar Pradesh. “The favourable UP verdict will redeem the team Amit Shah and lift the morale, which had taken sever beating after back to back big losses in Delhi and Bihar at the hands of Arvind Kejriwal and Nitish Kumar respectively. UP and Bihar constituted the bedrock of the 2014 mandate to the Narendra Modi government. Bihar is gone, and all hope is now with UP,” said a senior BJP functionary.
The intensity of the BJP campaign in UP where Modi alone addressed as many as 30 rallies, besides three roadshows in his Parliamentary constituency Varanasi, was marked with the eagerness on the part of the team Amit Shah to win the state decisively to leave a mark of an electoral authority. “In the event of the BJP losing UP, which when seen along with Bihar, will clearly rob the moral authority of the Modi government, as the two states account for 105 Lok Sabha seats out of the total 282 won by the saffron outfit in 2014,” stated another BJP functionary.
Even while the BJP had returned to the winning track by bagging Assam, the party leaders attribute the success to the general secretary Ram Madhav and the demographic dividends that the saffron outfit had reaped against the Congress led by Tarun Gogoi, who had been in power for 15 years. With UP alone accounting for 403 Assembly seats out of a total of 630, which went to the polls in the five states, the BJP leaders claim that a decisive victory would firmly establish “Brand Modi” as intact in the Indian politics.
Later this year, the BJP has to brace up for elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. While the BJP has to show its expansion in south with approaching polls for Karnataka Assembly elections, the saffron outfit will have to defend its power in crucial states – Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhatisgarh in 2018. “The Saturday verdict in the five states will lay the path for other states lining for polls. A decisive win in UP will help the BJP to gain a winning momentum in upcoming polls, which will become easier with the Congress weakening,” added the BJP functionary.
Incidentally, the BJP will face Congress as its main rival in all the upcoming state elections later this year and in 2018.