From chief strategist to mass campaigner, the assembly polls have seen Amit Shah emerge as a crowd-puller in his own right. What does this mean in the BJP’s battle for the heartland?
Amit Shah stands behind a saffron podium decorated with the party’s lotus symbol in Bhind, a town in Madhya Pradesh’s Chambal district. “Bharat mata ki jai!” he shouts. The audience echoes him. But the BJP president isn’t satisfied. “Kya bhai, Chambal ka paani aise dheere bolta hai kya (Does the water of Chambal speak so low)?” he asks. The crowd’s Bharat mata ki jai roar grows louder. Shah begins his speech.
The rally in Bhind is one of over 80 public meetings and roadshows in the five poll-bound states that Shah has addressed in the past two months, a vast majority in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. This, as his partymen will tell you, is almost double the rallies Prime Minister Narendra Modi has addressed. It’s part of a deliberate strategy. The party doesn’t want their sta2r campaigner to be overexposed. It is a gap the party president is filling as he crisscrosses the state, soaking up the adulation from local party workers and giving his Z-plus security detail nightmares as they struggle to control the crowds. Shah has set a gruelling pace for himself. In four months, he has also had 34 interactive programmes in these states with farmers, youth, women intellectuals and other focus groups. He is also the first BJP chief to address rallies in small towns such as Narwar, Bhind, Morena and Katni.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 10, 2018 من India Today.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 10, 2018 من India Today.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Grand Young Master
Seventeen-yearold D. Gukesh has become the youngest player to win the Candidates chess tournament
SPORTING SPIRIT
BADMINTON PLAYER ASHWINI PONNAPPA, 34, IS OFF TO HER THIRD OLYMPICS, THIS TIME WITH A NEW PARTNER, TANISHA CRASTO
PORTRAITS OF A PEOPLE
Etchings by the colonial Flemish artist F. Baltazard Solvyns are getting a new lease of life in an exhibition at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai
Centennial Man
A seminal exhibition of K.G. Subramanyan's works in his birth centenary year at Emami Art, Kolkata takes an imaginative and immersive curatorial approach
Rhythms of Nature
ARTIST AND MUSIC COMPOSER GINGGER SHANKAR'S LATEST SINGLE COMBINES SOUTH INDIAN MUSIC WITH INUIT THROAT SINGING
SEARCHING FOR THE SOUND
Kashmiri musician Faheem Abdullah’s debut album Lost; Found is a collaborative effort
FOUND IN TRANSLATION
With its excellent translations, Songs of Tagore makes Rabindrasangit accessible to the non-Bengali reader
Of Freedom and Friendship
T.C.A. RAGHAVAN'S CIRCLES OF FREEDOM FOLLOWS THREE YOUNG MUSLIMS DRAWN INTO THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE
The Razor's Edge
Salman Rushdie's Knife is an eloquent, first-person account of the horrific attack on him. It's also a love story
THE LAST-MILE PUSH
The India Today Smart Money Financial Summit had top experts discussing how technology could be leveraged to widen the reach of personal finance tools