The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has decided to campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates during the Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly elections scheduled for November 20, according to a senior BJP leader.
The Sangh had stayed away from the Lok Sabha poll campaign following a most unexpected statement from BJP chief J.P. Nadda that the party was not dependent on the RSS anymore. He had said the BJP had grown and was capable of managing its affairs on its own.
His statement had hurt RSS cadres who had all along regarded the BJP as the political wing of the Sangh. The cadres were preparing to go on a door-to-door campaign in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls when Nadda’s statement came like the proverbial bolt from the blue. It was then that the Sangh put its campaign on hold. The result was that the BJP which was boasting of securing 400 plus Lok Sabha seats ended up getting only 240 seats down from the 303 seats it had secured in 2019 and it had to depend on other parties to cobble up a coalition government.
It is still not clear what made Nadda make that controversial statement. It is learned that soon after the election, the RSS’ senior leadership summoned Nadda and sought an explanation from him for his unsolicited statement. It is not known what explanation Nadda provided to the RSS leaders. But sources said it has now decided to put that controversy behind it and go ahead with a plan to mobilise votes for the BJP in a big way.
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In the recently-concluded Haryana elections too, the RSS had played an important role. This was one of the principal reasons why the BJP could score a hat trick in that state despite the fact that all exit polls had uniformly predicted defeat for the party. “It was the RSS factor which did the trick in Haryana,” a senior RSS supporter observed.
RSS cadres in Maharashtra, where the organisation’s headquarters is situated in Nagpur, have now entered the campaign steadily. It has roped in Kajal Hindustani and other influencers to mobilise Hindu votes. The RSS is completing 100 years and a pro-Hindu government must be formed in Maharashtra. RSS workers will be going door to door and urge people to come out of their homes and cast their votes on November 20.
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One of the reasons why the RSS had now decided to play an active role in the polls is the strategic voting that Muslims did in the Lok Sabha elections. According to an India Today-Axis My India analysis, the Congress increased its Muslim vote share from 33 % to 38 %, while the INDIA bloc’s share of Muslim votes leaped from 19 to a whopping 42 %. This trend has the RSS worried and it wants to ensure that Hindus vote en masse and ensure the victory of the Maha Yuti coalition in general in Maharashtra and the BJP in particular.
