New Delhi/Bhopal: Empty chairs, “thin” crowds, stones thrown at vehicles, clashes between workers, poor management — the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) Jan Ashirwad Yatras in Madhya Pradesh and Parivartan Yatras in Rajasthan have set alarm bells ringing at its headquarters in New Delhi, ThePrint has learnt.
The yatras, both of which concluded Monday, were supposed to mobilise BJP cadres as well as the people in the run-up to assembly elections in these states in November-December. They have instead ended up exposing chinks in the state units, underlining factional fights in the BJP that are becoming more acute due to uncertainty about chief ministerial faces.
In Congress-ruled Rajasthan, where the BJP high command has had a prolonged tussle with former chief minister Vasundhara Raje, the situation is more alarming as the party’s rallies have drawn thin attendance, multiple leaders told ThePrint.
In Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP is in power, protests were reported in several pockets of the state during the yatras.
According to party leaders, the main reason behind the poor show at the rallies is the lack of a CM face in both states. Particularly in Rajasthan, Raje’s absence seems to have affected the public turnout.
BJP national president J.P. Nadda and Union Home minister Amit Shah had flagged off the first two legs of the Parivartan Yatra in Rajasthan on 2 and 3 September.
Two other yatras were flagged off by Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari. Covering a total distance of 9,000 km, the series of yatras concluded Monday with a public meeting addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Jaipur.
While Raje was invited to the launch of the yatras, the BJP leadership didn’t seek her involvement as the rallies progressed, multiple leaders said.
Raje is the BJP’s sole mass leader in Rajasthan but has fallen out of favour with the high command as the latter has been seeking to replace her with a fresh face. In the absence of a crowd-puller, the yatras turned out to be flop shows, a BJP functionary from Rajasthan told ThePrint.
A second functionary said, “The Parivartan Yatra was taken out in Sawai Madhopur, areas in and around Nagaur and Kuchaman and a few other parts of the state. But the response has been quite slow, either due to the absence of senior leaders of the state or because they have not been actively involved.”
“For instance, Raje was earlier supposed to lead the yatra but this was changed later, so that has impacted the crowds. Her supporters are upset that she is not being given importance,” he added.
Apart from the issue of leadership, even the apparently bad condition of raths used in the Rajasthan yatras — highlighting “poor management” — became a talking point in political circles.
Officially, the state unit has dismissed all talk of poor shows at the Parivartan Yatras and blamed the Congress for trying to “mislead the public”.
“The response towards the yatras has been tremendous. In a single constituency, we have been able to interact with at least 50,000 people. This has become a great initiative to connect with the people and understand their concerns. People are also out on the roads to participate in the yatras,” Mukesh Dadhich, state vice-president of Rajasthan BJP, told ThePrint.
In Madhya Pradesh, too, state BJP chief V.D. Sharma downplayed all talk of trouble at the Jan Ashirwad Yatras.
“The Jan Ashirwad Yatras received a tremendous response and have energised workers on the ground. All rallies have been a major success and people are coming out in large numbers across the state for the BJP,” he said.
According to Sharma, the yatras covered 223 assembly constituencies rather than the originally planned 210, and saw 24 lakh people take up membership of the BJP.
‘Just 500-odd people’ at some places in Rajasthan
During the Rajasthan yatras, BJP sources said, the situation was quite bad at the “aam sabhas” (public meetings) held in Churu, Rajsamand, Bharatpur and Fatehpur, among others, where the party struggled to draw a decent crowd.
The first functionary said that since state leaders had not been given any specific responsibilities, they steered clear of involvement in the preparations for the yatras, which was reflected in the public response.
“Not only this, the party cadre also seems unmotivated as many workers are still unable to understand how they are going for an election without a ‘CM face’, he added.
“Collective leadership is all fine and may work when we are in power, but in a state like Rajasthan, where (Congress leader) Ashok Gehlot is the chief minister and (former deputy CM) Sachin Pilot is another contender, we need to have a face too. Many were expecting that Raje’s name would at least be announced as the BJP campaign committee head, but nothing has been done so far and this has affected the morale of workers,” said the functionary.
Another cause of concern for the party is that the presence of other senior BJP leaders — apart from Raje — seems not to have pulled a crowd.
“At some places, the rallies saw just 500-odd people. At others, it was 600. Even in constituencies held by the BJP, the sitting MLAs were not able to draw any big crowd, which is a cause of worry,” said a Rajasthan BJP leader who has been keeping track of the yatras.
Asserting that there was poor management, the leader said, “Cooling in the raths used for the events was not good. At the same time, mikes also broke down often.”
“In Sri Ganganagar, an accident was avoided as the A/C inside the rath collapsed. While the crowd was waiting to listen to the speeches, the mike stopped working. This poor management shows how involved everyone was and how seriously they took these yatras,” he added.
The state leadership, however, says it resolved all technical issues.
“The pictures of empty chairs at public meetings are being shared by the Congress to mislead the people. These photos are generally taken before the start of the function and hence don’t indicate the real picture. The people of Rajasthan have made up their mind to change the government and the results will be out for everyone to see,” Dadhich said.
However, speaking to ThePrint, Jaswant Gurjar, general secretary of the Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee, said, “We are not misleading. It is a fact.”
“They (BJP) have to resort to entertainment and obscene dances to get crowds for their parivartan rallies. They promised a crowd of 5 lakh for the PM’s rally but couldn’t even muster 50,000 people. They say women organised the rallies but don’t let a former woman CM speak. The BJP’s rallies are empty. It’s what people see on the ground,” Gurjar added.
Protests mar rallies in Madhya Pradesh
The BJP’s Jan Ashirwad Yatras in Madhya Pradesh, launched from five different places in the state, reportedly did a little better than the rallies in Rajasthan.
The campaign culminated at Bhopal’s Jamboree ground Monday, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed lakhs of workers from across the state. He asked voters to choose wisely in the upcoming election, saying that the rival Congress was like “rusted iron” which had turned MP into a “BIMARU” state.
Protests were reported in several pockets of the state during the yatras.
On 2 September, even before the first yatra began, state water resources minister Tulsiram Silawat was reportedly heckled by farmers while he was in Khandwa to review the preparations for the rally. Upset about power shortages, the farmers were demanding that Khandwa be declared drought-affected.
This was followed by stones reportedly being thrown at the yatra on 5 September when it was crossing Rawat Kheda in Neemuch district. Villagers had assembled to meet BJP leaders and protest against fencing works being carried out for the second phase of the cheetah relocation project in the state.
Stones were reportedly hurled on SUVs ferrying BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, MP finance minister Jagdish Devda, and state education minister Mohan Yadav, among others.
In the wake of the Neemuch incident, 19 people were booked by the police on 6 September for allegedly inciting trouble during the yatra.
Subsequently, the Gopalak Sangh, an organisation of the Gujjar community, threatened to disrupt milk supply, asking for the release of “those arrested without a probe for stone-pelting”.
In another incident on 12 September, while the yatra was traversing the Sendhwa block of Barwani district, a group of BJP workers supporting former minister Antar Singh Arya and his son Vikas Arya allegedly clashed with supporters of the BJP ST Morcha in-charge after each group raised slogans in favour of its leader for a ticket from Rajpur constituency.
The two reportedly clashed in front of Goa CM Pramod Sawant who was present on the rath along with other BJP leaders from Indore and Barwani. All the leaders stepped down to resolve the situation.
A day before the clash among workers in Sendhwa, as the yatra entered Khargone district, BJP cadres raised slogans against Rajkumar Meo, the party candidate from Maheshwar seat in the district.
Speaking about the troubles at the rallies, state BJP leaders cited reasons similar to the ones given by Rajasthan unit leaders.
While chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan did make an appearance on some stretches of the yatras, they were mostly led by other leaders with little mass base, they said.
The BJP high command has also refused to spell out whether Chouhan will remain the CM if the party retains power in MP. The party has instead maintained that it would fight the elections under collective leadership.
In the run-up to the 2018 assembly election, Chouhan was the face of the Jan Ashirwad Yatra. But this time, the party has deployed a battery of leaders to ensure that he is not the face of the rallies and the image is of collective leadership, multiple sources in the state BJP unit told ThePrint.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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