BHUBANESWAR: National BJP vice president Baijayant Panda remains humble about his role in party’s emphatic victory in Assam Assembly election that returned the saffron party to power for the second consecutive time.Panda, who has been camping in Assam for over four months from mid-December, 2020 after his appointment as BJP in-charge of the state, played a key role in steering the party to victory. He, however, emphasises that he is a team player and gave credit to all the team members for the success.
The former MP from Odisha said he worked closely with the Assam team, holding regular meetings with Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, state president Ranjeet Kumar Dass and other senior leaders.“With inputs from the state BJP leaders, I was holding strategic discussions with party president JP Nadda, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and party’s national general secretary (organisation) BL Santhosh on regular basis with occasional interactions with Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” he told TNIE.
He said the campaign strategy was encapsulated in the slogan “Suraksha, Samriddhi, Sanskriti” which emphasised the huge improvement in law and order, resolution of Bodo militancy, curtailment of infiltrators, huge development in past five years compared to previous decades under Congress rules and finally the renaissance of Assamese culture which has been under assault for decades.
Explaining the reasons for the success, Panda said, “Assam had developed a pro-incumbency atmosphere, just as Modi had already achieved it at the national level. A big part of this was because of the PM’s personal attention to the Northeast, which he has visited more times than any of his predecessors, which has led to enormous development in the entire region including Assam.”
In contrast, Panda said the Congress leaders (read Priyanka Gandhi) started visiting Assam from January after a gap of many years. The Congress promise of wage enhancement for the tea garden workers did not work as the BJP had already fulfilled it before the announcement of the election.
On the defeat of the Congress-led UPA, the senior BJP leader said the alliance of the grand old party with the radical, communal AIUDF, which it had shunned until now, convinced voters that the party had sold its soul in order to polarise a certain section of voters. This has led to the Congress Mahajot (grand alliance) losing despite all their calculations of arithmetic.