RSS for fuel, BJP hopes to ride its new experiment

Trying to elbow its way between the two coalitions straddling the State polity, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is banking on a multi-pronged strategy to take them on in the local bodies elections. Its game plan is to stick to its core theme of Hindu unity, which the party has been visibly ratcheting up since the last Lok Sabha polls. Its rank and file have been told to nurture a broad understanding with local SNDP Yogam shakhas even while maintaining its traditional bonhomie with the NSS Karayogams, Viswakarma units, and KPMS factions.

The BJP will not put up candidates where the SNDP has fielded its nominees. Office-bearers of the NSS or any other Hindu organisations who also happen to be BJP members will contest on the Lotus symbol. At present, the BJP holds about 600-odd wards in the State. This apart, it is ruling three grama panchayats in Kasaragod district. The party has 5,000 out of the State’s 22,000 wards, including grama panchayats, block panchayats, district panchayats, municipalities, and Corporations in its cross hair.It has identified Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, municipalities such as Nedumangad, Neyyattinkara, Pandalam, Thiruvalla, Thodupuzha, Kodungallur, Kunnamkulam, Palakkad, Shoranur, Tanur, Kasaragod, and Kanganhad where it holds sway, to exploit the growing resentment among right wing sympathisers.

Unlike the past where the party’s campaigns had remained low profile, this time its State leaders have been assigned two to three districts each to work on. Further, for the first time, the RSS will be roped in to do the groundwork, a feature that has become almost a standard operating procedure elsewhere for the party, since the last Lok sabha polls. Activists under a pracharak would spearhead the BJP’s campaign in 5,000 targeted wards, sources said.

The BJP had a State vote share of 12 per cent in the last Lok Sabha elections. It now plans to increase this to 20 per cent. But much would depend on how the party's gamble with a newly-cobbled phalanx of Hindu organisations plays out, the sources added.