New Delhi: Five months before the Madhya Pradesh assembly election, in June, the Association of Billions Mind (ABM), a political consultant group that works with Union Home Minister Amit Shah and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), offered bleak feedback from Madhya Pradesh.
After conducting surveys on the ground, they said the incumbent BJP would only get 80 of MP’s 230 assembly seats.
This led the BJP to sideline Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan — who has led the state for most of last 18 years — in its campaign initially, fearing fatigue with the leader could be a factor in turning voters away.
The results Sunday, however, stunned everybody, with the BJP sweeping 163 seats — far higher than the brass’ own post-poll estimates of 120.
Speaking to ThePrint, BJP insiders credited the stunning victory to consistent efforts by the Madhya Pradesh unit of the party over the past two years, and Chouhan cultivating a loyal votebank among women.
The leaders said the win could not solely be attributed to the push made by central leaders in the few months preceding the 17 November election, citing Karnataka as an example, and adding that one “cannot market a bad product and make it a hit”.
“In Karnataka, we couldn’t get success because the product was not saleable despite the prime minister’s huge push and our effort to polarise Hindu votes. Our whole poll management was upside down,” one senior BJP leader involved in election management in Madhya Pradesh told ThePrint.
A significant part of this is because of the BJP’s famed election machinery. According to BJP leaders, for two years, the party mobilised ground workers to digitise and map its booths and track down beneficiaries of some of the party’s most successful central and state schemes, among other things.
The aim, according to party leaders, was to secure 51 percent votes at every booth. As a result, the BJP won 100 seats with 51 percent vote share and remaining with 40-50 percent, they said.
In June, faced with the prospect of voter fatigue, Chouhan and his government began making direct cash transfers under the government’s flagship Ladli Behna Yojana, a scheme under which eligible women are given financial assistance of Rs 1,250/month.
The gambit worked — the scheme is seen as one of the major factors to have turned the tide in favour of the BJP. This came as a major shot in the arm for the BJP leader, who was not made the face of the BJP’s Jan Ashirwad Yatra in September and reportedly found no mention in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in the initial days of election campaigning.
According to a state BJP leader, the party’s central leadership miscalculated the sway that the chief minister held among women.
“The central leadership missed ground sentiments and the emotional connect that mama ji (or “uncle”, as Chouhan is popularly called) had with women in the state,” this leader told ThePrint. “Central leaders only began mentioning him when they got feedback that women across caste lines were showing their love for Shivraj.”
Also Read: How MP’s ‘Mama’ Shivraj Singh Chouhan, under siege from within, turned things around for BJP
Roadshows, reaching out to women voters — how sidelined Chouhan helped score win
According to a BJP leader close to Chouhan, one feedback the party got regularly was that while the Ladli Behna Yojana had won over women voters, the men were not as happy.
“Men did not want to allow women voters to vote independently (for us). So we changed our strategy and told the CM to hold more road shows and meet the beneficiaries of the Ladli Behna scheme,” the leader said. “This was to remind them of the bond they had with their brother (Chouhan), so they could vote despite their family’s unwillingness.”
The strategy worked. “Shivraj held several roadshows and met beneficiaries. He even reminded them that if he wasn’t around, all assistance (provided under the scheme) could stop. This changed the entire election,” this leader said.
According to another BJP leader, the news of anti-incumbency made the central leadership decide to fight the election collectively instead of falling back on Chouhan’s reputation as an administrator, as it had previously done.
“Shivraj was a little upset but I advised him to not think about whether you’ll be made CM again. (I told him) do as many roadshows as you can and reach out to women. Give them a victory they could not have imagined,” he said.
Chouhan did a total of 165 public rallies and road shows in the run-up to the election, this leader said.
“After this mandate, it’s difficult to remove Shivraj. Even if they do, they can’t treat him like they treated (former Chhattisgarh CM) Raman Singh or (ex-Rajasthan CM) Vasundhara. He’s made a big mark,” he said.
On his part, Chouhan hasn’t indulged in muscle flexing since the mandate. Instead, while addressing a public rally in Chhindwara — the assembly constituency of his rival and Congress party’s MP chief Kamal Nath — he announced his party’s next goal: securing all 29 of the state’s parliamentary seats in next year’s general election.
Booth-mapping, organisational synergy beat voter fatigue
But despite Chouhan’s connect with women voters, much of the credit for the victory goes to the MP BJP’s voter outreach over the last years. The BJP has always prided itself on its organisational strength, and, according to party leaders, it’s this that came in handy during the election.
According to BJP’s MP president V.D. Sharma, the party replicated its “Gujarat model” to beat anti-incumbency and score a victory. This meant ensuring that all of the state’s 64,523 booths were digitised and mapped, he said.
The party made a complete database of all its workers. Like in Gujarat, booth committees were set up in over 96 percent of the state’s constituency over the last year to track its members in real time, Sharma said.
“Booth workers were given a list of beneficiaries of both state and central schemes. They were asked to meet them and involve them in various events,” Sharma said. “Women Ladli Behna volunteers were selected in every village to help create a buzz around the scheme.”
The activities were undertaken under the supervision of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
“Through organisational work, the cadre was galvanised. Workers were given small tasks, such as meeting 10 people a day to help raise the party’s vote share,” he said.
There was “complete synergy” to achieve the goal, state BJP in-charge Rao told ThePrint, adding that most of the work was done at the booth levels.
From January 2023, daily and weekly targets were fixed, a senior BJP leader said.
“Amit Shah handed out printouts of 15 tasks to be done in a day — such as reaching out to social media influencers, old party workers, and religious leaders — to every booth worker, and their progress was reviewed at every meeting,” he said.
At the same time, the party kept a careful eye on the state’s reserved seats, which cost the BJP the last election.
“These seats were carefully monitored and the prime minister was requested to visit tribal areas for greater outreach,” he said. The strategy worked — of the state’s 35 SC seats, the BJP won 26, up from 18 in 2018.
According to a state BJP functionary, it’s no surprise that BJP’s organisational structure helped win the election.
“MP has been BJP’s bastion long before Gujarat. MP BJP’s ability to pull voters to booths isn’t new. It has been strong since the days of (late leader) Kushabhau Thakre. But sometimes the leadership’s egos can be hurdles,” the functionary said.
There was “complete synergy” between the party organisation and the chief minister (Chouhan) this time, the leader said.
“We can’t imagine such a synergy during the tenure of former CMs Uma Bharti tenure or Sunder Lal Patwa,” the leader added.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
Also Read: How do you tour a state and miss the BJP landslide? Congress believed its own propaganda