With Narendra Modi at the helm of affairs, the BJP is planning to focus on the majority community. The BJP’s proposed “vision document” for the minority community is merely aimed to divide Muslim votes. “We don’t want consolidation of Muslim votes in favour of the Congress. We want the Muslim votebank to remain divided among the secular parties,” a BJP strategist said.
The overall saffron gameplan is to unite the floating votebank and divide the anti-BJP votes. “Our signal to Muslims will be ‘don’t vote for us, but don’t hate us’,” a senior party leader said.
If Mr Modi is being projected as an icon for the majority community, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s move to greet Muslims in his state on Id wearing a skullcap is being viewed as a march over Mr Modi. The Madhya Pradesh chief minister has made it a tradition in his two consecutive terms in office to visit a local mosque in Bhopal every year for the festival. He then makes a short speech at a stage set up there. Mr Modi, who had in the past refused to don a skullcap, did his bit by wishing everyone “Id Mubarak” on the microblogging website Twitter.
With the minority votebank remaining a troubled zone for the BJP, it has targeted two key states — Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. At this juncture, while the BJP has 10 Lok Sabha seats in UP, it has 12 in Bihar. The party is planning to bag at least a total of 65 Lok Sabha berths in the two states. For this, the BJP will need to win at least 40 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP and 25 of the 40 seats in Bihar. Saffron forces hope that the anti-BJP votes will be divided between the BSP, SP and the Congress in UP, and between the JD(U), RJD and the Congress in Bihar.