A day after Assam saw heavy voting in the first phase of polling for the Assembly elections, BJP president Amit Shah arrived in rainy Nalabari for an extended campaign pitch for the second round on April 11. Lower Assam is not as good a hunting ground for the BJP as Upper Assam, but hopes are up because of the high polling percentage.
As his chopper lands, Mr. Shah looks up at the ominous sky, and asks his party’s chief ministerial candidate, Sarbananda Sonowal, rather worriedly, “It looks like it will pour; I hope people don’t stay away because of that?”
At the Nalbari college ground, a sea of red awaits him, not a good sight for the chief of the saffron party, but the sight of a sizeable crowd holding their red-coloured chairs over their head as shelter from rain pouring now does cheer up Mr. Shah. He instructs that pictures of this must be taken and sent to the BJP’s social media team.
His speech, which was varied in his next three public meetings only for certain hyper local references, begins with a cry of Bharat Mata Ki Ji , as the debate on nationalism, conflated with the issue of Assamese identity, is the party’s calling card. “Say it loudly enough so that Rahul Gandhi in Delhi can hear you,” he says. “We all know that [Assam Chief Minister] Tarun Gogoi and Badruddin Ajmal (chief of All India United Democratic Front) may oppose each other in public, but are prepared to join hands in private and maybe after the elections. We will not allow this to happen,” he says in Nalbari, Dharmapur, Mangaldai and Palashbari, the spots that he hits on his campaign trail.
He makes a special reference of the fact that Alaka Desai Sarma, former Asom Gana Parishad MLA from Nalbari, is present on the dais. “We all know the sacrifices her husband made for the cause of Assam,” he says. Ms. Sarma’s husband, former AGP leader Nagendra Sarma, was gunned down by ULFA militants a few years ago.
The other theme he repeats is that this is a referendum on Tarun Gogoi’s 15-year rule and not the NDA government. “Sonia Gandhi ji said in one of her rallies that Modi ji ’s government must explain its record. I want to tell her that these are Assembly polls, not for Lok Sabha, we will present our record in 2019 when the nation will judge us; now it is Assam’s turn to judge Tarun Gogoi,” he says.
In Dharmapur, he makes a special mention of the fact it is the site of Billeshwara Devalaya, an important Shaiviite shrine. Later, he tells this correspondent that the area was an important centre for astrology, spreading onwards to Darbhanga in Bihar. “Arjuna [one of the Pandavas] on his way to Manipur was waylaid by floods, and spent some time here,” he said.
Asked if the localisation of the election, fewer rallies by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and announcing Mr. Sonowal as the chief ministerial candidate were a reaction to the loss in Bihar, his answer is characteristically pugnacious. “You people [the media] think every election has to be fought with one strategy, because you all don’t contest polls. Every election is different and we strategise differently,” he says.
In Dharmapur and Palashbari, crowds thong the route to the venue, waving at Mr. Shah and Mr. Sonowal. “They want to see you, wave to them,” he instructs Mr. Sonowal and the local candidate travelling with him. His parting instructions to cadre, “It’s raining nowadays, make sure our voters manage to come out on polling day.”
