BJP worries if its gamble with loose cannon Pragya will pay off 

What could have prompted the BJP to select Malegaon blast accused Pragya Singh Thakur to take on Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh from Bhopal? After all, her only credential is that she is a rabid Hindutva motormouth.

Political circles believe she has been fielded to obfuscate BJP’s report card in the state. Angry voters dissatisfied with BJP’s 15-year-long stint in power had voted the party out in the Assembly election. And the Lok Sabha election coming soon thereafter could well have reflected a similar result.

Three out of eight assembly segments in Bhopal Lok Sabha constituency returned Congress nominees in December while there was only one in the previous assembly. Two of the seats were also won by Muslim candidates.

The calculation of the RSS while fielding Pragya Singh Thakur hinged on the Muslim voter behaviour. While the total number of voters in Bhopal is around two million, Muslim voters number around 4.5 lakh. Since they are unlikely to vote for the BJP, strategically the RSS-BJP were left with no option but to go all out to consolidate the Hindus behind the BJP.

An agenda of hard Hindutva laced with spiritualism and the victim card played by Pragya Singh Thakur, the backroom boys reckoned, would be enough to do the trick.

In the last Assembly election, the RSS asked BJP to field a Muslim candidate against Arif Aqueel, who was the only Muslim MLA in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly to split the Muslim votes. That ploy failed when Fatima Rasool Siddiqui (35) put up by the BJP made no impact against Arif. That was also the election when BJP realised that its strident stand on banning Triple Talaq did not quite mobilise Muslim women behind the party. Therefore it is back to Hindutva for the BJP.

Fatima Siddiqui was inducted into the BJP a few hours before her nomination was announced. Pragya Singh Thakur also joined BJP barely hours before her nomination from Bhopal was announced by the party. Reaction in both the cases has followed on predictable lines.

As in the case of Fatima Siddiqui in the Assembly election, several political observers and sections of BJP supporters believe that fielding Pragya Singh Thakur has been a masterstroke. Rajesh Jain, who runs an advertisement agency, believes Pragya Singh should comfortably beat Digvijaya Singh.

The decision would make the campaign more volatile and high on ‘Hindu emotion’, he explains. And after the plank of nationalism wearing thin, fielding the terror accused was the right decision to rally the Hindus, he says.

However, other BJP supporters wonder if this would really work. Harshad Shekhar who has been opposing Digvijaya Singh of the Congress right from the time he was named as the party’s candidate from Bhopal, feels the BJP candidate would drive voters to exercise the NOTA option. “Why this desperation when the party believes it has delivered on its promises,” is what baffles him.

A section of BJP voters worry that putting up the terror accused amounted to falling into the opposition’s trap. It amounts to an admission that the party had failed in delivering ‘Development’. It would lend credence to the opposition’s propaganda that BJP had scant regard for the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

Another one of their worries, that the political novice would put her foot in the mouth and land the party in trouble is already coming true. After carelessly claiming that her curse had killed Hemant Karkare, she bragged that she had climbed on top of the Babri mosque in 1992 and was among those who demolished it. She was proud of her role in demolishing the structure, she added. She also invited ridicule by telling a TV interviewer that by caressing the back of a cow in a particular way helped her control blood pressure. Indeed, drinking cow’s urine had cured her of cancer, she added.

Narendra Modi, she declared, is an incarnation of Krishna and was born to end the misrule of the last 70 years. This was a Dharm Yuddha (crusade) and she was happy to be fighting the anti-Hindutva forces. It is still early to say that her statements and antics would enthuse the voters. She has been asked to go slow on controversial issues.

The RSS has asked BJP to hold her hands. Senior BJP leader Prabhat Jha has been deputed to tutor her. Her war room is being handled by BJP vice president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and the party president Amit Shah is said to be personally monitoring her campaign.

BJP workers have been informed that any reluctance to join her campaign would invite action. But while the party is able to browbeat the booth level worker, there is considerable indifference among middle level leaders, say BJP insiders.