Even Narendra Modi's closest aide and firefighter Amit Shah underestimated the tsunami that his boss and the BJP's prime ministerial candidate has unleased in Uttar Pradesh. A few days ago Shah had augured that the party would get between 50 and 55 seats in the state. Friday mid-morning the BJP was running ahead/winning in around 68 seats in the state, with Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) as well as Mulayam Singh's Samajwadi Party (SP) almost decimated.
The epicentre of the Narendra Modi ‘tsunami’ has been UP, riding on a campaign carefully orchestrated by Shah. When he was given the responsibility to deliver UP by BJP president Rajnath Singh in 2013, the state unit was in a quandary. Shah did not bother to unify the warring factions by mediation, instead he gave each leader one booth to adopt and deliver to the party on polling day. Soon they were all working for the same cause, their factional fights lying way behind.
The latter part of the campaign, which became most controversial, saw Modi playing the caste card in the state. From the results it seems the strategy worked out, even as his rivals and civil society at large castigated him for that.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka had unleased an aggressive campaign in the state, with the latter saying that Modi indulged in ‘neech rajniti’ (low politics). Her target promptly took it out of context and used it alleging that the Gandhis were taunting his backward caste credentials.
Ironically, the biggest loser in 2009 in the state was the NDA, which had won just 15 seats. The SP took 23 and the BSP 20 seats. Against this fragmented backdrop, the sweep of 2014 by the Modi-led NDA is being regarded as political miracle.
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