It seems the BJP does not want to take any chances when it comes to assembly elections in Gujarat, due by the end of this year. The party has put no less than senior leader and finance minister Arun Jaitley in charge of the preparations, and he will be assisted by four central ministers.
The move, seen as unprecedented, is clearly an attempt to regain ground the ruling party has lost in Gujarat since the Modi-Shah duo moved out of state politics. After Modi became prime minister the state has seen two CMs, but none with the skills and charisma of Modi.
The BJP has been buffeted by political headwinds in Gujarat since 2014, starting with the Patidar quota agitation led by Hardik Patel and followed by the atrocities on Dalits in Una and the Rajya Sabha poll debacle.
The party has been in power in Gujarat since 1998. It announced Thursday that Jaitley, who had handled elections in Gujarat three times in the past, would be assisted in his new task by union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar, Nirmala Sitharaman, Jitendra Singh and P.P. Choudhary.
Sources said Gujarat is a prestige issue for both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah and the party was going out of its way to ensure that it not only wins the state but wins it convincingly.
For the record though, some senior party leaders sought to downplay the development, saying deploying central ministers is a routine strategy.
“It is a routine appointment in the states going to polls,” said Bhupendra Yadav, Gujarat state prabhari and national general secretary.
But other leaders said that the top brass is conscious of winning the state by a huge margin.
“The Congress has won the Rajya Sabha seat and our party has decided to make up for that. We have received direction from the top that we need to win more than 150 seats in the state,” said a senior leader. This, the sources said, is in line with Amit Shah’s ‘Mission 150’.