The Sangh Parivar has set the tone for the coming electoral battle, compelling its affiliate BJP’s adversaries to react on the VHP’s “84- kosi yatra” for the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. While BJP claims that development and good governance are its poll planks, reviving Hindutva, it was learnt, is also part of the Parivar’s poll strategy.
The saffron party is hoping that polarisation of votes will help it in reviving its numbers in Uttar Pradesh as well as some other states. It was the Ram Mandir movement, which had brought the BJP to the national level politics. If Opposition parties termed the yatra as a political exercise ahead of the crucial polls, the BJP backed VHP is claiming that the tension in the state was caused by political statements and not due to the yatra.
Hindutva poster boy and BJP’s election campaign committee head Narendra Modi has been closely monitoring Uttar Pradesh, by first sending his confidante Amit Shah to oversee poll preparation of the state unit. The Gujarat chief minister, considered as the frontrunner for the party’s prime ministerial candidate post, is also scheduled to kickstart the saffron party’s “Congress mukt Bharat” campaign in the state in September from Vrindavan. Infact, Mr Shah, who had visited the Ram Mandir at the disputed site in Ayodhya recently, had vowed to build a “grand Ram mandir.” Mr Modi is considered by many as a polarising figure.
It could be mentioned here that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, BJP chief Rajnath Singh and VHP leaders including its chief Ashok Singhal had attended the “Dharma Sansad” held earlier this year in Allahabad where VHP had passed a resolution to launch a campaign to “re-establish Hindu identity” and press for construction of the Ram Mandir.