The game plan of BJP national president Amit Shah to take Uttarakhand by storm seems to have come a cropper. The crowd at his rally in Haridwar on June 25 was not as impressive as expected.
Shah was naturally annoyed with the dismal turnout. State BJP brass boasted that they would pull a mammoth crowd of not less than 1.5 lakh. later, they chastened a little, saying that it would be around one lakh. But what happened is that the turnout fell woefully short of the target, around 30,000 people.
The State saffron leaders did not, however, find anything amiss in it. They believe that such rhetorical bluster is part of the public life, say the observers. However, the party high command was not amused. They were rather crest fallen, said the party insiders.
“They thought that the recently inducted leaders like Kunwar Pranav Singh Champion and Pradeep Batra would bring additional crowd, making things more impressive. However, things proved otherwise on the ground,” said one of the BJP insiders . Observers say that things would have been more humiliating for the party had not the duo which had recently switched to BJP from Congress managed to pull a number of their followers to the rally.
The high command wonders why the State leadership failed to pull the expected volume of a crowd despite people being rallied from as many as 21 Assembly constituencies of the Haridwar district. It is learnt that a veteran leader with RSS background was sent to assess things. The report sent seemed to have ascribed the lower turnout to the bickering involving a former CM and a legislator from Haridwar. The party high command has reasons to worry about what would happen with a faction-ridden BJP approaching the next Assembly election, barely six months away.