This Article is From Oct 22, 2014

In Haryana, an Amit Shah Master-Class on How to Win Elections

(Akhilesh Sharma is Senior Editor, Political - News, NDTV)

While politics in Maharashtra dominates headlines, the real story of last week's election was scripted by the BJP in Haryana, where it crafted a winning strategy despite not having a solid organisational base or a party network built over years.

The Haryana win is a story of meticulous poll planning and management by the party's new president, Amit Shah, who functions like the CEO of a big company. His approach to elections involves astute distribution of work among leaders and workers and keeping track of implementation.

Shah realised that the BJP had made an unduly generous pact with Kuldeep Bishnoi of the Haryana Janhit Party in the national elections this year, by conceding more seats to the partner than it could possibly win.

So after taking over the reins of the party in July, Amit Shah held fresh talks with Bishnoi and offered him 20 seats, instead of the 45 he had asked for. He also offered the post of deputy chief minister if the partners won the elections.

Bishnoi rejected the offer and the BJP decided to go it alone.

It, however, neither had enough candidates nor the organisational structure and workers to contest all 90 seats. So Shah imported disgruntled leaders from other parties like the Congress and the Indian National Lok Dal overnight and handed them ticket.

The sagacity of that decision can be gauged from the fact that of the 47 BJP candidates who won, 17 had joined from other parties recently.

Then, entire contingents of BJP workers were transported from other states. The man in-charge of elections in the state was Kailash Vijayavargiya, a minister in the Madhya Pradesh government, and he brought with him a large number of workers and leaders from there.

Apart from Madhya Pradesh, MPs and MLAs from Punjab, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh were also posted in the state. Leaders and workers were handed charge of each of the 90 seats and 22 districts and they had submit daily reports.

The BJP's ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activated its network. Swayamsewaks were given the responsibility of mobilising workers for every booth. On polling day, separate arrangements were made to bring voters to the booths.

A key challenge was to prevent the polarisation of Jat votes in favour of four-time chief minister Om Prakash Chautala of the INLD. So the BJP gave 25 tickets to Jat candidates, very aware of its image of being a party more aligned with non-Jats in the state.

It fielded the wife of Chaudhary Virendra Singh, a powerful Jat leader imported from the Congress. Also, prominent roles were assigned to Jat leaders Chaudhary Virendra Singh, Captain Abhimanyu and Om Prakash Dhankad to win votes from the influential community, which is the single largest chunk of voters at around 22 per cent.

The party did manage to breach the Jat vote bank to some extent. Six of its Jat candidates won. The party paid particular attention to Jat youth banking on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity among the young.

At the same time, the BJP cautiously ensured that this attempt to win favour with the Jats should not upset its core vote bank of non-Jats in the state.

In the last leg of the campaign, when reports emerged that Captain Abhimanyu could become chief minister, the party was quick to contradict this and threw all its weight behind its 48 non-Jat candidates to ensure their success.

41 of them won, one of the reasons that ML Khattar, a non-Jat leader, will be the state's new chief minister.

In its campaign, as it did in Maharashtra, the BJP used 90 buses equipped with video messages from PM Modi - one for each seat. CDs of Mr Modi's address at the Madison Square Garden in New York were distributed widely and prime time slots were purchased on local news channels to propagate the party's message.

According to party strategists, the powerful impact the Prime Minister made in America, won a lot of support among the youth for the BJP.

Finally, the BJP identified seats where the margin of victory or defeat was likely to be less than 5000 votes. Workers were given instructions to ensure that at least 5000 additional votes were cast in favour of its candidates in each of these.

The exercise involved handing one page from the voters' list to one worker, who would then be responsible for contacting every voter on it, ensure they reached the polling booth and convincing them that the BJP was the best choice.

The party also kept a close watch of activities on the rival camps and also on the Satta or betting market, daily following the rates on each party's chances of winning or then how individual candidates were expected to fare. Reports were sent to the top leadership.

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