As the Vidhan Sabha election to the five states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Mizoram – are approaching, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has upped the ante against both the Congress and its leader Rahul Gandhi, not against any other party or leader in opposition, betraying his heightened political threat perception from, though he had boasted for “Congress Mukt Bharat” and formerly brushed aside Rahul Gandhi as someone politically insignificant and merely a child (pappu). PM Modi has not only made scathing attack on the state government of Rajasthan led by the chief minister Ashok Gehlot on Saturday, but also labelled Congress as “Loot ki dukan, jhooth ka bazaar” (Shop of loot, market of falsehood), and singled out Rahul Gandhi for political attack, apart from severely criticising the Congress leadership in a public rally at Bikaner on Saturday, July 8, 2023.
Meanwhile, while showing BJP the door in Karnataka, not only general and OBC category people, but also the STs and SCs unequivocally showed that they have been deserting the BJP and are no longer mesmerized on the much-touted Modi’s charisma. It has necessitated Modi to restore his lost charisma first, before winning any elections. The BJP lost a large number of reserved seats for SCs and STs in Karnataka, and it runs the same risk in all these five states after the incident of a BJP leaders’ urinating on an Adivasi in Madhya Pradesh that has angered them across the states. Manipur ethnic riots have further exposed the nefarious design of the BJP and its majoritarian politics that left many dead. Its spectre will be haunting the Adivasi communities across the nation in general and more particularly in Mizoram in the north-east where the lone MP seat is reserved for ST. The seat is presently held by Mizo National Front (MNF) that has been part of NDA since 2014. However, it is most likely that BJP would have to struggle to keep the NDA united there. The term of the Mizoram Vidhan Sabha is to expire in December 2023. The situation was till recently in favour of the NDA, but the situation is fast changing against it.
It is in this backdrop, the unsparing utterance of PM Modi in Bikaner rally against the Congress and Rahul Gandhi could be understood, apart from lashing out at the Gehlot led Congress government in Rajasthan. PM Modi said that Congress is confident of its defeat, but kept silent about his confidence of winning the state election. PM Modi even devoted more than usual time in enumerating the Congress’s weaknesses rather than his or BJP’s stronger position. He claimed that Congress was suffering from infighting and corruption, and did immense damage to Rajasthan in the last four years of their rule. He even made a series of allegations against the Congress and said it was unstable, when everybody knows that Congress has been firmly ruling the state for its last full term. As far as Rahul Gandhi is concerned, PM Modi attacked him on four counts – farmers’ issues, ‘mohabbat ki dukaan’, Rahul’s comments in US and UK, and opposition’s including INC’s demand for proof of surgical strike by Modi on Pakistan in 2016 and 2019. All these betray Modi’s confidence.
