Backroom boys who engineered the second wave

NEW DELHI: These are not national faces or ones seen on TV channels but BJP’s backroom team, working under party president Amit Shah, did a commendable job planning campaigns over a long polling season.


The media team headed by Rajya Sabha MP Anil Baluni had a hectic schedule since polls were announced as he and his associates ensured that telecasts of Modi’s speeches didn’t clash with any other major political event. Baluni also arranged daily interactions of spokespersons with finance minister Arun Jaitley.

The media advertising outreach was vetted by Shah and the Prime Minister. The surveys were monitored by Shah himself while party vice-president Bhupinder Yadav handled the logistics and choice of the PM’s rallies in coordination with Modi’s office.

In West Bengal, identified as a possible breakthrough state, party general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya played a major role in cementing differences among party leaders as the state unit was marred by factional fighting even though it didn’t have any heavyweights as such. Yadav also oversaw Bihar and Jharkhand where the BJP did well but which were marked by tricky equations.

Rajya Sabha MP Anil Jain has been an important functionary with regard to political strategy in Haryana where BJP used a divide in the Jat vote and disenchantment with Congress to its advantage.

In UP, Sunil Bansal played a key role since the time he assisted Shah when the leader was a party general secretary.

HRD minister Prakash Javadekar got former CM Vasundhara Raje to accept the entry of individual leaders who were important to Jat and Gujjar equations and ensured that divides in the state unit did not hurt the party. Former Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, UP CM Yogi Adityanath, Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar, Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis and Jharkhand CM Raghubar Das were able to use the Modi factor to deliver handsome returns.