Road to 2024 LS Poll: Modi draws polarization versus populism battle line
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, June 27: Battles lines for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections have now been drawn, with Opposition parties working on a common agenda and Prime Minister Narendra Modi enticing the opponents to come out of their comfort zones. In his address to the booth workers of the BJP, said to be 10 lakh, Modi revealed the BJP poll template for the Lok Sabha elections next year.
Karnataka election outcome appears shaping the political discourse and also pushing the BJP to the wall to work extra hard to be safe for the next year’s general election. Modi’s speech to the BJP booth workers confirmed two worries for the saffron outfit – revival of tactical voting by Muslims, and the people pitching for bipolar contest to deny the benefit of the split of the Opposition vote base to the saffron outfit.
This explains the urgency of the BJP to whip the polarization card by giving the centre stage to the Uniform Civil Code for which the Law Commission has solicited public feedback even while its predecessor had ruled that there was no necessity for the exercise while lending weight on celebration of diversity in the country.
“If the practitioners of the vote bank politics had been true well-wisher of the Muslims, brothers and sisters of the community had not been lagging in education and employment, and also not forced to live life of hardships,” said Modi in an answer to a question by a BJP booth worker on Tuesday.
The BJP for decades had been promising to bring the Uniform Civil Code (UCC). But the Modi government conveniently kept the one sensitive agenda to cash in on for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections after delivering on the promises of building a grand Ram Temple in Ayodhya and abrogating Article 370 to integrate Jammu and Kashmir fully with the rest of the country.
“The Indian Constitution speaks of bringing the Uniform Civil Code, but these people (Opposition) hungry of vote bank never discussed the issue. They neither allowed the Pasmanda Muslims to get their rights,” Modi sought to draw the fault line within the Muslim community.
Pasmanda Muslims constitute a sizable vote base in Bihar where the BJP will be facing the combined Opposition without the help of any formidable ally in the state. With legislation on triple talaq, the BJP had sought to turn heat on the gender fault lines within the Muslim community in the country.
Clearly, Modi’s bid to whip up polarisation is aimed at blunting the identity politics of the Opposition parties, as well as their aggressive populism in the form of cash dole outs through entitlement-based guarantees.
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