BJP banks on Shah and Shaheen Bagh to win Delhi

Young Karnataka MP of BJP, Tejaswi Surya felt “the days of Mughal Raj coming back to Delhi are not far away” if the majority of this country is not vigilant, the patriotic Indians do not stand what is happening today in Delhi's Shaheen Bagh

BJP has bet high on an electrifying campaign by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Shaheen Bagh protest to catapult the party into winnability form its abysmal 3/70 performance in last assembly polls in Delhi.

Even on the last day of campaigning, which is one of the most vitriolic any Delhi election has witnesses, BJP President Jagat Prasad Nadda did not forget to project Delhi election as a fight between those “those with Shaheen Bagh” and “those with people of Delhi”.

“There is talk in Shaheen Bagh about dismembering India. Arvind Kerjiwal government says it is with Shaheen Bagh. But the BJP is with the people of Delhi. Kejriwal government does not grant permission to file chargesheet against tukde tukde gang while we had put behind bars even those who shouted anti-national slogans in JNU as well as Sharjeel Imam (one of the early organizers of Shaheen Bagh protests), who talked of severing Assam from India,” Nadda said giving the slogan of “Abki Baar Paintalis Paar (This time over 45).

To buttress the point that the BJP is in the foremost of taking pro Hindutva and nationalist decisions, Nadda in a press statement issued on the last day of the campaign, said “in last eight months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accomplished many historical tasks, which none had imagined before him—be it the scrapping of Article 370 and 35A in Jammu and Kashmir, ban on triple talaq or enacting CAA. Modi also paved the way for construction of a grand Ram temple by announcing the setting up of Shree Ramjanmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra.”

Modi government’s motormouth minister from Bihar Giriraj Singh went to the extent of tweeting “Shaheen Bagh is no longer just a movement. Here, suicide bombers are being trained. There is a conspiracy against the country in the country's capital.”

The saffron party which is out of power in Delhi since its five-year tenure with three Chief Ministers, Madan Lal Khurana, Sahib Singh Verma and Sushma Swaraj between 1993 and 1998, is making a desperate bid to end is more than two decades exile from power.

Plagued by lack of a charismatic local face even after multiple trials and errors, having projected faces from ace politician late Swaraj to a top cop Kiran Bedi, from a soft spoken Harsh Vardhan to a brash Bhojpuri singer Manoj Tiwari, the party has this time chosen to go polls without projecting a CM face, seeking votes in name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a video message, Modi told Delhi voters that their vote for the BJP in assembly polls will strengthen his hands at the Centre.

The party has heavily depended on the hardline Hindutva narrative pushed aggressively by Shah, besides his organisational and campaigning skills.

And here in Shaheen Bagh fits into the scheme of things, where the protest has largely been a Muslim and affair and the locality and its name itself comes handy to the BJP to polarize voters.

As Shaheen Bagh turned a focual point, there was no end to hyperboles from all sides. Reading a suggestion in remarks of various BJP leaders that the protest at Shaheen Bagh will be brought to an end after polling on February 8, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday expressed his suspicion over the government using force saying “might be they will shoot them, they might turn Shaheen Bagh into Jallianwala Bagh.”