‘We may belong to different parties but our aim must be the same- the development of India and empowerment of every Indian’

As soon as the Election Commission of India announced dates for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged fellow Indians, especially first-time voters, to ensure a historic turnout, and sought their “blessings” to get elected again.

He pitched the performance of the NDA government against the record of the previous UPA government, which, he tweeted, had led to “India’s self-confidence” being “at an all-time low”.

“In 2014, the people comprehensively rejected the UPA. There was an unprecedented anger over the UPA’s corruption, nepotism and policy paralysis,” he said, adding that his government had spent the last five years fulfilling basic necessities. “Now the time has come to build on that and create a strong, prosperous and secure India.”

Mr. Modi is undoubtedly the central focus of the BJP’s campaign.

The strong focus on issues related to nationalism and national security in the last month or so will also be a huge part of the party’s campaign, but the speed and deftness with which the BJP has sewn up multiple alliances across States, points to the fact that it is as concerned about basic electoral arithmetic rather than just the chemistry of Mr. Modi’s image or the rhetoric on nationalism.

Adding allies

On Friday, party president Amit Shah met Sudesh Mahto of the All Jharkhand Student’s Union and gave up claims on the Giridih Lok Sabha seat, in exchange for support from the AJSU in the 13 other seats in the State.

The tie-up, making the AJSU the 29th ally in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), outstrips the number of alliances that the Congress has managed to put together.

By giving up Giridih, a seat that has been held by the BJP for multiple terms, the party has sent a significant message.

The generous terms negotiated by the Janata Dal(U) in Bihar, the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and the AIADMK and the PMK in Tamil Nadu with the BJP point to the fact that while the party’s campaign rhetoric is “Modi vs All”, it has been consolidating alliances wherever it can.

The main spur for the alliance-signing spree seems to be not just the formidable Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance in Uttar Pradesh, but also the fact that the BJP has peaked in its areas of strength, namely the 226 Lok Sabha seats of the Hindi belt.

The feeling that it needs to keep not just its old friends close like in Bihar and Maharashtra, but also needs a strong alliance in states like Tamil Nadu, and keep some regional powers neutral towards it, like the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the YSR Congress Party in Andhra Pradesh and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha.

The BJP explains the alliance spree, in the face of a Modi Vs All campaign rhetoric with references to opposition unity as a “Mahamilawat” (Grand Adulteration) as a mini narrative within a meta one. “We have clarity on who the leader of our alliance is. Not a single party in the alliance has doubts that it is Prime Minister Modi. The reference to the opposition’s attempts at alliance as ‘Mahamilawat’ is to the fact that nobody in the opposition camp knows who the leader of this grand unity against Prime Minister Modi is,” said Rajya Sabha MP and media cell in charge Anil Baluni. “In Uttar Pradesh both the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party think they lead the alliance, in Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu has his own ideas about what the unity should look like. Therefore we are not against alliances, but want to point out that qualitative differences between the alliance that we have forged and the attempts by the opposition.”