Modi said it is not a "poll plank" but that it is a “matter of faith for the people of the country”. Pray tell, then, why the entire day yesterday, on the occasion of Ramnavami, did Modi go from place to place, this city to that town, and even in the Prime Minister’s aircraft, keep inserting “Ram” in all his politically-laced utterances, and speeches?

The whole enterprise is captured on tape. Television channels have been playing recordings. Modi has been sharing Ram with people across the country. Gushing Ram's praise. Displaying images of Ram Lalla’s ‘Suryatilak’, which Modi and Modi’s ministers, notably Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani, claimed had happened for the first time after a gap of "500 years".

Mind you, Prime Minister Narendra Modi commands an army of blind followers aka “Modi bhakts” and they believe Modi will be a "Ramavatar" in his next life. These Modi bhakts were singing Ram songs including the famous ‘Aayenge Ram’ throughout the day and night on April 17. Also, “Chunavi Ram” has become part of the BJP’s election rhetoric and juxtaposing “Ram-mye” with the “Mughal mindset” has become part of the electoral warfare.

On June 4, the country will get to know if Ram delivered or did not deliver. On Ramnavami, it did not take much convincing. Ram was in the “kan-kan” of electioneering everywhere, from West Bengal in the east, and Agartala in the northeast, to Karnataka in the south and Uttar Pradesh in the north. Jaipur in Rajasthan was inundated in “Ram” and the sentiment had gotten hold of the entire state.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and the other “UP Ka Ladka” Samajwadi Party Chieftain Akhilesh Yadav held a joint press conference in Ghaziabad and paid their respects to Lord Ram. One got the sneaking feeling they wished the Ayodhya Ram Mandir had never been built and wasn’t a “poll plank”, especially not that of the other poll plank – “Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

For, if the Ram Temple is the BJP’s poll plank, then Narendra Modi and everything that Narendra Modi did over his tenure can be and should be the INDI-Alliance’s poll plank. Prime Minister Narendra Modi already is the Congress party’s poll plank, as Rahul Gandhi has been proving again and again, on a daily basis, hitting out at the Prime Minister on a host of issues, i.e., Modi’s many “wrongdoings”.

Notably, the clearly, patently, manifestly dubious electoral bonds scheme, which the Congress leader, at the joint press conference April 17, said was an example of “extortion on the street”. Doesn’t that make “Modi” the Opposition’s poll plank? The highly lucrative and dubious electoral bonds scheme, now scrapped by the Supreme Court, has put the glare on Prime Minister Modi. The Prime Minister in his ANI interview gave a defence.

Point is, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot escape being the poll plank of the Opposition INDI-Alliance. Not that Modi wasn’t a poll plank for the Congress before. In 2019, Rahul Gandhi had made Modi his party's poll plank. It misfired “bigley”. This time, the Congress leader cannot be cavalier if he doesn’t want to end up walking the proverbial plank. Nothing, however, can take away from the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and his “actions”, is a poll plank for the opposition INDI-Alliance.

That said, the Ayodhya Ram Mandir is the BJP’s prized poll plank. In fact, the BJP is blatantly using the Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha to influence Hindu voters. Come June 4, if the BJP wins 80 of 80 in Uttar Pradesh and “all” in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, and in Uttarakhand, it will be because of the “Pran Prathistha” of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir. The “gaumutra states” are immersed in Ram and religion is indeed the opium of the electoral masses.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s “Ram remarks” on the eve of Ramnavami were a giveaway of how much of a poll plank it has become for the BJP. June 4 will reveal if the Muslim vote remains the sole game-changer. As for Ram Mandir, here's what Modi said: "You must have seen how the Congress hates the Ram temple. The Congress and its entire ecosystem start screaming if there is even a reference to the temple. They say the Ram temple is an election issue for the BJP. It was never an election issue and will never be an election issue." Isn’t he contradicting himself? The Ayodhya Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s one and only poll plank. (IPA Service)