Union home minister Amit Shah, who always likes to overlord and projects himself as the most astute politician, the Chanakya, will for the first time trail the opposition leaders by convening the meeting of the National Democratic Alliance in Delhi, coinciding with the second opposition meet, on Tuesday with the agenda of countering the Opposition’s meeting in Bangalore. This simply underscores that he utterly lacks the political acumen that an astute politician has and is dependent on his coercive and oppressive tactics.

Use of his intimidation strategy is on show in Maharashtra, Bihar and Bengal. The three states are of immense importance in his design to perpetuate the Modi Raj. The three states send 130 members to the Lok Sabha and in the present house, the BJP has at least 100 members. Incidentally, these three states have turned out to the fortress for the anti-Narendra Modi forces and parties to consolidate their base. Foothold of the rightist forces has crumbled in these states with Sharad Pawar, Nitish Kumar and Mamata Banerjee looking straight into the eyes of Modi-Shah combine and throwing open challenges to their political hegemony.

In Maharashtra, the Modi-Shah combination initially split the late Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, by subverting the state machinery and misusing the office of Governor to install the discredited Eknath Shinde government. The compulsion to gain back the support base was so acute that they even compromised on the issue of sharing power by offering the office of chief minister to Shinde instead of installing their loyal soldier, Devendra Fadnavis.

But once they realised the peoples’ abhorrence to their machination and also not succeeding in their mission to retrieve their lost ground, Modi-Shah engineered a split by luring in the greedy Ajit Pawar. But if the political developments at the ground level are any indicator, the BJP in the wake of the latest incident, has lost its credibility. While the percentage of votes polled by Shiv Sena and NCP have gone up, in the case of BJP it has declined. In last election, BJP has fetched 27.84 percent, Shiv Sena 23.5 and NCP 15.66 per cent. After the political debacle, the shares for SS and NCP have gone up by 5 per cent and BJP has lost nearly 7 per cent.

The latest survey on the popularity of Pawar and Modi puts Sharad Pawar much ahead of Modi. This is something like BJP committing hara-kiri. However, undaunted by these reverses, Modi-Shah have been focusing on Maharashtra in the hope of gaining back lost vote-shares. But it appears that the opposition unity gaining steam has virtually sealed the future of the BJP.

As per sources, the Karnataka opposition meet would witness Sharad Pawar and Nitish Kumar emerging as the ideologue and the pivot. Modi and Shah perceive these two leaders as their main political adversaries, in terms of election arithmetic if not the public face of opposition, which is why they have launched fresh round of action to humiliate and break their morale.

Pursuing their tried and trusted shenanigans, the BJP has filed a petition in Supreme Court through a cadre named Bhupesh Narayan requesting to order for investigation of Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav. The petition also urged for constitution of a special investigating team (SIT) headed by a retired apex court judge or a direction to the CBI to probe the July 13 incident at Patna in which an alleged BJP leader, Vijay Singh, died while taking part in a march against the Nitish Kumar government.

Even after the district administration made public the CCTV footage, which shows that Singh was not the victim of lathi charge, he died away from the place where police had resorted to lathi charge, the state BJP leaders, especially the turncoats, avow that he died of police assault. The state police and district administration had emphatically denied their allegation and asserted that "no injury marks" were found on his body.

BJP has also filed complaint against Tejashvi, Nitish and also against Patna's DM and Senior SP in the Patna Civil Court. A well-orchestrated campaign has been launched, notwithstanding the Bihar administration furnishing substantial proof by way of making public the CCTV footages that showed the deceased was not at Dak Bungalow crossing when the lathi charge took place.

Clearly, this is yet another vicious campaign launched against Nitish and Tejashvi. The BJP has painted target on Tejashvi’s back with the CBI filing chargesheet against him in the land-for-job scam. The BJP has been resorting to all kind of tactics for not allowing the Assembly to function. The most interesting aspect of the campaign has been the media, especially a section of the upper caste journalists, who have preferred to identify with the BJP’s cause and joined the malignant campaign.

Besides, the BJP leaders have also aimed their guns against Nitish saying that he has been in touch with Modi-Shah and is planning to renew his relation with Modi. The main source for this rumour is none else but senior BJP leader Sushil Modi. He even said that even if Nitish Kumar rubs nose at BJP’s doors, he would not be accepted. The BJP leader’s remark came amid speculation that Bihar could witness a Maharashtra-like political crisis.

Rumour is also being circulated by some BJP leaders that all is not well in the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar. Nitish holding meetings with his legislators also added to the speculation of his switchover. JD(U) leaders charge the BJP leaders of playing dirty game about the survival of alliance. Meanwhile, JD(U) sources maintain that some senior BJP leaders had approached the JD(U) MLAs with the offer of Rs. 100 crores each for deserting Nitish and breaking away from the party.

In Bengal too, the state BJP leadership, with the design to hide their failures, have started putting up a brave face and coming out with the demand to place the state under president’s rule. The worst kind of misuse of the state power is on public display in Bengal. Though the figures underline that vote-share for BJP has sharply declined, they have been claiming that it was terror let loose by the TMC that prevented the voters from coming to booths.

The fact has been otherwise. It is not that incidents of violence had taken for the first time in the state. But the people in the past came out to exercise their right. The fact is vote share of BJP has sharply declined in the panchayat polls. It received 22.88 % of votes in the rural polls, a sharp decline from about 38% votes registered in the 2021 Assembly polls.

The final vote share figures show that while Trinamool has grabbed the lion’s share of votes at 51.6 per cent, the BJP is down to 22.9 per cent. That’s 17.74 per cent less than what the BJP amassed in the 2019 general elections and 15.07 per cent less than what it received in 2021 state polls. Conversely, the Left’s 13.2 per cent vote share in the rural polls is a jump of 6.86 per cent compared to 2019 and a 7.54 per cent spike compared to the Assembly elections two years ago.

The BJP leadership is scared of the impact of the panchayat election results on the Lok Sabha election. Their fear primarily owes to the revelation that the rural voters did not vote for BJP as the Modi government did not release the funds for 100 days work. Mamata for past six months had made it a major issue and even had planned a protest march to Delhi. TMC leadership had blamed Modi for holding back Bengal’s share of funds for centrally-sponsored schemes and projects. Mamata had accused Modi of “taking revenge” on the people of Bengal by denying funds.

The revelation was made at a close-door meeting of some senior state BJP leaders. They held that this move of central leadership proved to be counterproductive. The people perceived it as an anti-Bengali move. This was the primary reason for the former CPI(M) shifting back their loyalty to their parent party. The leaders hold that the government instead of blocking the funds should have released it and at the same time also released a white paper detailing the malpractices in execution of various centrally-sponsored schemes in Bengal.

They nurse the view their not resorting to this mechanism, which was suggested by a section of the state leaders to Delhi leaders, has simply strengthened the belief amongst the rural people that BJP was resorting to coercive measures to force Mamata to fall in line. This was also viewed the voters as an insult to Bengali pride and identity.

Significantly, the study report of BJP on panchayat elections reveals that CPI-M has eaten into anti-Trinamool votes, which were hitherto the sole preserve of the saffron combine. Though the CPI(M) candidates were defeated in most of the places, they performed better than the BJP. They bagged more votes even in the areas which had high Hindu population and are marked as the strong belts of BJP. The BJP had won from these even in the 2021 assembly elections. (IPA Service)