Mayawati vs Moditva vs 123…

The Gujarat assembly elections hold great significance for Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi and Mayawati, who have their eyes on greater glories. But in politics, the art of the possible can be a big if

Vijay Sanghvi Delhi

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi seems well prepared for the December assembly elections in Gujarat. He has evolved a campaign strategy to beat his detractors within the BJP and the Congress. He is even more prepared now that the Congress has decided to present him with a visible and rather vulnerable enemy in Rahul Gandhi to vent his ire and his acidic barbs at.

Modi has managed to put together his list of achievements with a certificate from multinational Ernst &Young and a booklet highlighting his 'Initiatives for Inclusive Growth'.  It is a long list of claims and his detractors within  either  the  BJP or Congress are  unlikely to challenge or disprove all of them.

He has also been working on his election strategy long before any of the others. His little booklet was released just four days before the Election Commission's announcement of poll dates in Gujarat, depriving his opponents of an opportunity to complain about a violation of the code of conduct that comes into force with the announcement of election dates. Essentially, Modi used government money to advertise his achievements.

He commissioned international consultants at the World Economic Forum in China that he had attended leading a delegation of industrialists. The firm was ready with the reportage for release on October 6 at Delhi. At the release function, former union minister and ex-journo Arun Shourie even pompously declared that Modi is basically prime ministerial material.

The Congress high command decided to run Rahul Gandhi as its potential candidate for the office of the prime minister by assigning him a difficult political task as the star campaigner for the party in the Gujarat polls. As Modi is an astute communicator, Rahul Gandhi would need an equally formidable think-tank to equip him with special communication skills. But the think-tank would also need to provide him ways and means to ensure that the UP Chief Minister Mayawati does not become a spoilsport for the Congress by chipping away a large portion of the Congress votes.

The media has made much of the Modi detractors within the BJP, with former chief minister Keshubhai Patel leading a band of dissidents who want Modi removed from Gujarat as he has been openly behaving like a dictator and does not show respect for anyone. The other complaint against Modi was that he had forgotten the Hindutva mantra using which he had won an absolute majority in the last assembly elections.

Their complaint is that Modi has concentrated on wooing Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and tribals at the expense of the upper castes. The dissidents initiated their public agitation against Modi by organising the Patels on one platform, but soon realised that it was a wrong move as all anti-Patel forces were being pushed into the lap of Modi. Keshubhai Patel led a large anti-Modi rally of farmers at Rajkot but it failed to cut ice with the party high command despite the fact that there is no love lost between BJP chief Rajnath Singh and Modi, who is considered to be the first disciple and loyalist of the former union home minister Lal Krishna Advani.

Despite all the hue and cry by dissidents, they cannot do any serious damage to Modi. Dissidents are not equipped with evidence to disprove Modi's claims of achievements because he apparently planned his schemes to identify and satisfy the less privileged like women, fisher-folk and tribals. They constitute a large chunk in the total electorate and seem to be moving towards the Congress. Modi is ardently wooing them.