New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not just drawing up a report card of its own “successes” as the Lok Sabha elections draw near, it is also preparing one listing the “failures” of opposition parties where they are in office.
According to sources in the BJP, the party has decided to make a targeted approach against prominent opposition leaders heading state governments.
These include two states headed for assembly polls along with the parliamentary polls: Odisha, led by Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD), and Andhra Pradesh, governed by former BJP ally Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of Chandrababu Naidu.
Of the two other states that go to the polls with the Lok Sabha election, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, the former has a BJP-led government.
In Sikkim, the BJP has joined hands with the opposition party Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) against the ruling Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF), which has been in office for 25 years.
However, the report cards are only likely to focus on bigger states being governed by satraps: West Bengal, led by Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, Punjab, under the Amarinder Singh-led Congress government, Kerala, under a Left Democratic Front (LDF) administration headed by Pinarayi Vijayan, Delhi, under Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and Telangana, where K. Chandrashekar Rao’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is in office.
“Thinktanks associated with the party have been tasked with preparing these reports, which would aim to compare the promises made by these parties in their respective manifestos, and how they delivered on them,” a senior BJP leader told ThePrint.
Almost all the leaders likely to be targeted are involved with the opposition front taking shape to challenge the BJP at the Centre.
The aforementioned source said that though the election was being contested on the issue of nationalism, the BJP did not want to leave any room for opposition attacks on the issue of performance.
“What is a better way to show them how they have performed on their promises?” added the source, who is associated with the process.
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‘To be used throughout the campaign’
According to sources in the party, the state-wise report cards of opposition governments will be unveiled during the campaign for the seven-phase Lok Sabha polls, which kick off next Thursday.
“The report cards of opposition-ruled states are in the final stages and will soon be unveiled in these states,” a senior party leader told ThePrint. “Our target is to have them distributed ahead of the first phase of voting. However, these are going to be used by the party in all seven phases,” the leader added.
As reported by ThePrint earlier this week, the BJP has already decided to release a report card highlighting the NDA government’s achievements over the past five years.
The thrust of the ‘report card’ is that the Modi government has been proactive in taking decisions, such as “granting 1,100 cabinet approvals” for projects, as opposed to the “policy paralysis” under the previous Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
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