Home Minister Rajnath Singh is a man of measured words and a moderate style. On the campaign trail in western Uttar Pradesh, however, it is his zestful recounting of his visit to Pakistan for the SAARC summit last August and the surgical strikes by the Army across the Line of Control last September that gets him the most applause.
As Mr. Singh criss-crosses the region, from Agra to Aligarh and Dadri, he recounts how he did not want to visit Pakistan for the SAARC meet, but “when I heard that anti-India groups who supported use of terror against us said they would not allow me or Prime Minister Modi to set foot in Pakistan, that is when I said that I would go and deliver a tough message against terror, and I did”.
“When terrorists crept across the LoC and attacked our jawans as they slept, martyring 17 of them, our government gave a fitting reply,” he says referring to the surgical strikes. “India does not provoke anyone, but if provoked it doesn’t leave any challenge unanswered,” he says.
In contrast, demonetisation and the campaign against black money does not draw quite as much applause, though when he links it to ending terror financing, there is a show of hands from the crowds in appreciation.
The BJP’s promise in its manifesto to write off agricultural loans and an undertaking to reduce interest rates to zero is again a crowd-pleaser. In Aligarh, Mr. Singh just makes a passing reference to illegal slaughterhouses and the need to close them down. A local BJP worker says on the sidelines that it is an issue for the party in the area. “Cow slaughter is rampant here. Gai bhai son main dubka kar maar dee jaati hain [cows are slaughtered hidden among buffaloes],” says Vineet Varshney ‘Bunty’, a local BJP man in the district.
Mr. Singh’s son Pankaj Singh is in the fray in Noida. As the rallies move closer to that seat but skirt it, he says he would not be campaigning for his son. “He has been working there since he was 22. The voters know him and me too,” he says.
At Bulandshahr, the BJP’s worries on the splitting Jat vote (the community voted en masse for the BJP in 2014) are apparent. Pictures of former Prime Minister Charan Singh dot the rally ground despite his party, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, fighting against the BJP. In Agra, a mention of local MP Ram Shankar Katheria draws jeers. These are the issues that the party needs to be wary of, the angry Jat vote, bogged down with worries over the dues to sugar-cane farmers and unpopular MPs.
Mr. Singh, however, is determined to plough on, marking the enthusiastic response of the crowd to his oratorical style. “In U.P. this time, it’s all versus us [the BJP],” he says. He dismisses the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance. “One leader whose party needs propping up [referring to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi] and the other party has a Chief Minister [Akhilesh Yadav] who blames his uncles for his failure,” Mr. Singh said.
As the day winds to an end, he manages to finish all his scheduled rallies despite a late start. “When I was Chief Minister of U.P., I once did 16 public meetings in a day,” he says. Undoubtably, he is in his element campaigning in his home State.
