What’s the difference between being a political manager, formulating strategy for elections in the backroom, and being the candidate and the face of a campaign? Union Minister Bhupender Yadav, the BJP’s candidate from Alwar, fighting his first Lok Sabha election, is discovering the nuances of his position, a difference he describes as one between “a programme and a festival”.
Mr. Yadav, 54, has for long handled important States for the BJP — Bihar, for both the 2015 and 2020 Assembly elections, and more recently, Madhya Pradesh. The work, as he told The Hindu, was more about how the party’s organisation was geared for the elections, whereas being the candidate was more about connecting with the public at large, many a time leaving the backroom maneuvres to someone else. He has also been Rajya Sabha MP twice over.
Being a candidate is also about answering uncomfortable questions, including the one posed by The Hindu, that he had preferred Mahendragarh constituency to Alwar, and that he was fighting the “outsider” tag. “The party wanted me to fight from Alwar, and truly speaking, Mahendragarh, Rewari and Alwar are only delineated by political boundaries. It is, in terms of society, culture and kinship, a common ground,” he responded. “My maternal grandmother hails from Jakhrana, in Alwar. My paternal aunt has family in Siryani, which also falls in this constituency. More to the point, the Congress candidate Lalit Yadav and I, also have connections in common,” he said.
Important pit stops on his campaign day were the Arya Samaj Mandir at the Tijara market town, where he quickly paid obeisance at the shrine and spoke to the gathered crowd, and a jansampark (public outreach) at Kakrali village.
His itinerary takes him deep into rural Tijara, the Assembly seat represented by Baba Balaknath, who had won the Alwar Lok Sabha seat in 2019, and was asked to contest the Assembly election in 2023. The outreach programme here, as in other places where Mr. Balaknath accompanies Mr. Yadav, is part of the optics of presenting a united front amid talk that the current Tijara MLA was missing being an MP.
“Bhupendra-ji and I know each other from the time when my Guruji Mahant Chandranath-ji was alive,” Mr. Balaknath said. At a small public meeting in Gothada village, Mr. Balaknath puts forward his “request” to the waiting crowd, “like always, Gothada should be number 1, in terms of votes polled for the BJP”, adding a word of caution at the end to voters to not “lend a ear to anyone who is speaking otherwise”.
Mr. Yadav, made to stand on a weighing scale for a tulabhara (ritual weighing), then launches into his stump speech. The emphasis is on “Modi’s guarantee”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s record of governance and delivery on welfare promises. “The Congress party is a sinking ship. We cannot hand over the country to them. Look at what the Congress did in Rajasthan when it was in power. They did not allow money sent for the development of the State to be used. The party allowed corruption to run rampant,” he said.
“Please remember Alwar was and should remain Rajasthan’s singhdwar (lion’s gate),” Mr. Yadav said in the end, a reference to the 15th century Bala qila or fort, which remained impregnable for centuries, code for asking that the seat remains an impregnable bastion for the BJP.
The Alwar Lok Sabha seat has eight Assembly constituencies, of which the BJP has three and the Congress has five, with a mixed population of Yadavs, Muslims, Brahmins, Vaishyas, and tribals. Talking of strategy gets Mr. Yadav animated, till a wave from a handcart at a market town reminds him that he is the candidate, and must take centre stage where he would earlier duck behind the curtain.
