BHUBANESWAR: The BJP made no secret of its desire to capture power from “panchayat to Parliament” as it began its two-day national executive meeting in the Odisha Capital on Saturday. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi revelled in the triumphal mood of the party by leading a high-octane road show through the main street of Bhubaneswar, the BJP’s national president gave glimpses of the party’s current horizon.
Shah spoke of a golden age for the party which would come when power is won in States like Odisha, West Bengal and Kerala. Towards that goal, he indicated to party leaders, nothing is impossible with “Modiji as the mascot of the party”.
Modi played that role to the hilt during his roadshow leading upto the conclave inaugural. From the Biju Patnaik airport to Janata Maidan, the venue, it was a 20-minute ride of splendour, marked by lotus-waving fans on the sidewalks, a rock star riding a Range Rover and occasionally wading into the crowd for warm howdy thank yous. It was an intensity — both the PM’s and the crowd’s — last seen in Varanasi before the sweeping victory in Uttar Pradesh.
While Modi did the atmospherics, Shah laid out the agenda. In his inaugural address to the conclave, Shah did the peremptory nod to the poor, crediting the party’s Garib Kalyan programme for the BJP wins in four out of the five States that had elections last month.
There was self-congratulation: the NDA Government had done in three years what would be beyond the capacity of other dispensations in two or three terms. And there was hyperbole: “The Prime Minister is the most popular leader since Independence,” Shah was quoted as saying by Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
But the thrust of the BJP’s messaging to the party faithful was that the peak was yet to come, and that would come when peaks unconquered are scaled. “We have 13 chief ministers with us now,” Shah said. “But the peak will come when the BJP comes to power in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and West Bengal.”
And there was God. Shah announced that he was making a vow at the feet of Lord Jagannath, as he had done in Prayag when the last national executive was held in Allahabad.
The party’s next goal, he said, was to win the Assembly elections coming up in Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka, and then Odisha in 2019.
All the 13 chief ministers were not in Bhubaneswar in fact. Assam’s Sarbananda Sonowal stayed home because it was Bihu. But the party’s latest star, Yogi Adityanath was very much there, hogging all the attention.