In re-directing the BJP’s campaign after the first phase of voting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has positioned himself and his party as the only ones capable of ‘rescuing’ reservations from Muslims for Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs, accusing the Congress of planning to give SC/ST/OBC quotas to Muslims. What has become collateral damage in the process is the BJP’s own Pasmanda outreach in Bihar, which had been in the making for over eight months.
In every Pasmanda village it enters, the party’s minority cell in the State is faced with voters who are both fearful and angry — fearful that the BJP will take away existing reservation for the Pasmandas under the OBC/EBC category and angry about the tone and language Mr. Modi had been using to allude to Muslims in his campaign speeches over the last few weeks.
“Whenever we go into the community now and mention the PM, I am asked, ‘Have you heard his speeches?’,” Kamruzzama Ansari, the party’s minority morcha president told The Hindu, as he and his team prepared for yet another day of campaigning in the Saran Lok Sabha constituency’s Pasmanda villages, which will vote on May 20 in the fifth phase of the election.
