Mumbai: Flush with the Lok Sabha landslide, the RSS is reportedly ready to monitor the BJP’s assembly poll campaign. Elections to the 288-strong Maharashtra legislative assembly are scheduled for October.
“The RSS certainly played a key role in the Lok Sabha polls. We look forward to profiting from the Sangh’s expertise and organizational setup in the Vidhan Sabha elections as well,” said a senior BJP functionary on Monday.
Sources say the RSS has started study sessions across the state on the Modi era of national politics, emphasizing the need to consolidate Lok Sabha polls’ gains.
Stating that stepping into the Lok Sabha minefield was the Sangh Parivar’s “conscious” move, the BJP functionary said, “The Sangh isn’t always active in elections. However, this time round, the political situation was unprecedented.” He recalled the 1977 and 1998 Lok Sabha polls for the Sangh Parivar’s “proactive” role.
Besides the deteriorating law and order situation, inflation and governance deficit, escalating threat to national security and multiplying cases of cross-border terrorism, especially the beheading of four soldiers in January last year, prompted the RSS to step in, he said.
After much brain-storming, the RSS bigwigs agreed to relax their coveted tenet that an individual leader should be unceasingly subservient to the organization. Thus came Narendra Modi on the national scene, sources said.
Mohanrao Bhagwat, the RSS Sarsanghachalak, too, shed his earlier inhibitions about Modi and asked close confidantes Bhaiyyaji Joshi and Suresh Soni to monitor the BJP campaign.
Senior RSS karyakartas from Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the Sangh’s student wing, and Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, a saffron trade union body, were roped in to lend a helping hand to the BJP’s poll juggernaut. The Rashtriya Matadata Manch drew up an elaborate plan for mobilization of voters across the country. Bhagwat geared up the RSS limbs to ensure a larger voter turnout.
The BJP, irrespective of the poll landslide, may have an uphill task ahead, say many Sangh karyakartas.
Several in the Parivaar think that Modi may sooner or later fall prey to pressures of populism and personality cult. To what extent will the PM pay heed to the Sangh parivar’s advice is a matter of animated debate in the organization.