Modi wave swamps farm loan waiver, stalwarts bite the dust

BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh may have voted out BJP in the state six months ago, but in the fight for Delhi, it has shown where its heart lies.
Factors like farm loan waiver, which the Congress government was banking on, were swept aside in the Modi 2.0 tsunami. Led by former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, BJP launched an aggressive counter-narrative on the waiver scheme, telling farmers that they had been cheated. It hit home, and hit hard.
Congress realised the danger too late. By the time it started sending jeeploads of waiver documents to Chouhan’s home, two rounds of voting were over in MP. In the end, the 28-1scoreline said it all.
Rashtravaad (nationalism) overwhelmed jativaad (casteism), throwing all political equations haywire. It didn’t matter if the candidate was a Brahmin, Thakur or SC/ST. If it was a BJP candidate, only Modi mattered.
Modi’s appeal completely eclipsed not only Rahul Gandhi’s Nyay scheme but also negated the effects of the waiver of farm loans for 21 lakh farmers in a short span of 75 days by the Kamal Nath government. With very little time between elections, the Nath administration rolled out several schemes based on its ‘Vachan Patra’, but it was all overshadowed by the Modi factor.
In Bhopal, Pragya Singh Thakur survived the tumultuous aftermath of her controversial statements and Digvijaya Singh’s spirited campaign due to Modi.
If there was another factor at play, it was the RSS. Swayamsevaks had started the field work months in advance, especially in areas where they perceived BJP was on shaky ground. Over cups of tea at voters’ homes, RSS activists would talk of nationalism and strong leadership, not caste or community or economy. It clicked.
Congress got only one seat — Chhindwara, where chief minister Kamal Nath’s son Nakul somehow held on to a tenuous lead.
Congress stalwart Jyotiraditya Scindia’s defeat and Nakul’s victory were perhaps the two biggest indicators of how overwhelming the Modi wave was.
If exit polls predicted two seats for Congress, most people would say it would be Guna and Chhindwara.
Both seats withstood saffron tsunami — in 2014, Scindia won Guna by 2 lakh votes and Kamal Nath won Chhindwara by over 1 lakh. In 2019, Scindia lost by over 1.25 lakh votes, and Nakul scraped through by just 37,000 votes. To add salt to the wound, it was Scindia’s former poll manager, K P Yadav, who defeated him, with Scindia trailing in every round.
Former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan tweeted: “People of Madhya Pradesh had promised to rectify the mistake committed in the 2018 assembly polls in Lok Sabha polls. They have done just that. I am grateful to them, and congratulate the most popular leader in India, Narendra Modi.”
Kailash Vijayvargiya dug it in, tweeting: “In MP, only father and son (Kamal Nath and Nakul) have won. The rest of the Maharajas and courtiers have been routed. Congress lies crushed in the Modi wave.”