Amit Shah was made the BJP president earlier this month. And now Narendra Modi's number two is all set to embark on a new project to create strongholds in states where the BJP does not have much of a hold.
The Telegraph reported a source close to the BJP president as saying, "Our priority is to achieve a big breakthrough in Odisha, Assam, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. Unlike Uttar Pradesh, where our organisation was dormant but existent and our core base intact, we have weak party apparatuses with defined core constituencies in these states, including Assam."
It is evident why Shah was chosen for working out a break through in the above mentioned states. Despite being behind the scenes, Shah was key to BJP's sweeping victory in Uttar Pradesh in the2014 Lok Sabha Elections.
An earlier article on Firstpost says: The Uttar Pradesh campaign was Shah's trial by fire. From having to assuage the egos of senior party leaders denied tickets to travelling across the length and breadth of the state, Shah hit the ground running ever since he took charge on 12 June 2013. He devised strategies -- including the booth-level management that reaped rich rewards -- that will certainly become fodder for academic research and political imitators alike. Thousands of committed activists were assigned one polling booth each, and were assigned the responsibility of reaching out to each and every voter whose name featured in the electoral roll for that booth. In most areas, workers were exhorted to meet each voter not once, but repeatedly.
But the meticulous Shah is not sitting idle because he has achieved his win in UP. He has already started planning for the future. India Today's cover story on Shah quotes BJP chief Laxmikant Bajpayee as saying, "Shah is a man of not just vision but firm resolution and immediate execution. We've already had a crucial meeting with him on the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, which are scheduled for 2017. On our next visit, we will look at the criteria for ticket distribution."
In a bid to rid the BJP of the image of a party that is popular in only the cow belt and west India, Shah wants to tap into Telangana and Tamil Nadu as well to increase the party's vote base. "In north Kerala, where the RSS has a base, many swayamsevaks were killed in clashes with the Left. Now, when we are in power at the Centre with a good majority, it won’t do any good to our image if our workers get continually involved in violence. So Tamil Nadu and perhaps Telangana are the best options to tap in the south," The Telegraph quoted a source as saying.
Looks like Shah is not satisfied with only an increased popularity in states like West Bengal or Tamil Nadu but wants visible results in terms of seats. In both these states, before this years elections, the BJP hardly had much traction. And this is not just planning for the next Lok Sabha elections, but Assembly elections in different states as well.
Shah, in an interview, told India Today, "we have to create and put in place a vote-catching machinery in the form of a strong organisation in states where we increased the popular votes in the recent polls but couldn't convert it into a proportionate number of seats, or where there is a possibility of further increasing the number of seats—West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh would fall in this category. Then we have to win the forthcoming Assembly polls in states including Maharashtra as impressively as we did in the Lok Sabha elections."
It seems like Shah will now look for a clean sweep across India in the up coming Assembly poll.
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