BHOPAL: The high-voltage campaign has left no doubt - the 2023 Madhya Pradesh assembly election is going to be a bare-knuckle punch-up.
And this time,
Congress believes it has an army of cadres to take on the might of the BJP, which is banking on the star value of PM Narendra Modi and the party organisation.
With no chief ministerial candidate projected, the BJP is fighting this assembly election on the face of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On October 19, PM Modi wrote a letter addressed to the people of Madhya Pradesh, saying he has a "special bond" with them, which got him unprecedented support in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Six BJP MPs - three of them Union ministers - and a national general secretary are contesting the election as the BJP hopes that not projecting a CM face will help it tackle anti-incumbency. Did the strategy work? We'll know when the votes are counted.
Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan feels confident of a BJP victory and says the party will decide the CM.
The Congress, on the other hand, is going full steam ahead with PCC chief Kamal Nath as the CM candidate, and party leader Rahul Gandhi saying Congress will win 150 seats.
The fight, this time, is at the booth level.
In his first speech after taking charge as state Congress president in May 2018, six months before the last assembly polls, Nath had said: "Our fight is not against the BJP, but its organisation."
He realized the Congress organisation had dwindled after the 2003 loss and subsequent electoral defeats, while BJP's cadre strength had muscled up.
Over the last five years, Nath set about building the cadre formation. "For the first time in MP, we have 58,000 booth workers," said state PCC media department vice-president Bhupendra Gupta. "Till May 2018, we only had an organisation till the district and block levels. After Kamal Nath came to the state, he introduced the mandal level, a step down from the blocks. In six months, Nath increased the 600 organisational units to 3,000, and 500 blocks were increased to 800. He started 2,400 mandals to match the BJP's strength."
Congress claims it has booth workers, like the BJP, though far outnumbered. Under Nath, the Congress has two 'booth level agents', who have the authority to write to collectors in case of "BJP excesses". "In this election, our organizational structure has increased from 3,000 units to 15,000 units," Gupta explained.
Ranged against Congress are 41 lakh registered BJP workers in 65,430 booths, and layers of leadership till the grassroots. BJP says it has more than 1 crore workers in the state. With Union home minister Amit Shah in charge of the assembly elections here, BJP has declared it is contesting in every booth.
BJP banks on booth-level officers as poll strategy: VD The target set by Shah is 51% votes in favour of BJP -this is 10% more than the party's 2018 average of 41.02% vote percentage. In an internal meeting with booth level workers in July, Shah said that a victory with less than 51% votes cannot be counted as a win.
State BJP president VD Sharma told TOI, "Our entire strategy is based on the booth. Amit Shah ji has allocated 15 different jobs among booth workers, including replying and reacting to Congress allegations and observations at the booth level. BJP's strength is its workers."
A year before the elections, the BJP introduced 'panna prabharis' - workers who were put in charge of each page of the electoral roll. One page of the electoral roll generally has 60 names and panna prabharis have to be in touch with all of them.
"Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stressed on 100% saturation of government schemes so that benefits given by the Centre and state reach the people. Panna prabharis were asked to ensure that people eligible for benefits are registered and the aid reaches them," Sharma argued.
By February this year, the BJP further divided the electoral page into half and appointed 'ardh panna prabharis', making each of them responsible for 30 voters till the day of polling.
At every election rally, PM Modi assigned BJP workers with a "personal job". "Will you go to every house in your constituency and say that Narendra Modi sends you his pranam (greetings)," the PM said. BJP workers are doing exactly that. Especially in rural areas.
The Congress strategy is entirely different. "In the 2018 election, when we had not much of an organisation, Congress received 40.89% votes. We were 0.04% less than BJP. In the last five years, our organizational structure has increased from 3,000 units to 15,000 units," Bhupendra Gupta explained. "Even a 1% increase in votes will give us 20 seats more, which means 114 seats which we won in the last election, plus 20. Or 134 seats. However, with the BJP's anti-incumbency, we are expecting the swing to be not less than 3% to 4% which will result in a Congress sweep in the state," Gupta said.
BJP says it's equally confident of a sweep. "We'll win with a thumping majority," CM Chouhan had told TOI.TNN
