In football, as in other sports, the strikers often receive praise, but the coaches and tacticians understand that the real playmakers are the midfielders.
Unquestionably, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the BJP’s leading hitter. Another striker who works hard to drop back towards the middle of the pitch in order to bolster the weak flanks is Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah. The BJP decimates its adversaries when they are weak, with Modi and Shah making it a one-sided match.Source: ABP LIVE- ABP News
Gujarat is a wonderful illustration of this lopsided match in which Modi is sufficient to give the BJP the victory in the assembly elections. It doesn’t matter that the BJP has a third Chief Minister since 2014 because of the huge goodwill Modi has built for the party over his nearly 13 years as Chief Minister.
The BJP runs the risk of handing the midfield to leaders who haven’t yet proven their mettle in the election-bound states. Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Raman Singh, and Vasundhara Raje, three imposing state leaders, have been nurturing the BJP’s electoral bases in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan for more than a decade. But as part of its plan for the leadership changeover, the BJP appears to want to go beyond them.
Even at Jhalawar, Raje’s hometown, she was absent from the Parivartan Yatras. Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, a minister for the Union, is her most immediate rival. Arjun Ram Meghwal and Ashwini Vaishnav, both Union ministers, have intentions to run for state office. Rajyavardhan Rathore, a former Union minister, is also still in the spotlight.
The onus is on Modi and Shah to list the shortcomings of the Congress government because none of them were able to mount a challenge to the Ashok Gehlot-led administration in the previous five years. With Raje out of the picture, the BJP’s major problem in Rajasthan is to dispel memories of how lackluster the BJP has been during its five years in opposition.
The BJP leaders who were deployed from neighboring states to help Chhattisgarh erect polling places regret that the party had been so ineffectual in its opposition to the Bhupesh Baghel-led Congress administration. The difficulty for the BJP in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh is to hide the fact that there hasn’t been a noticeable Opposition for the past five years, primarily due to the absence of second-rung politicians.
Despite an issue with a divided state unit in Telangana, the BJP appears to be experimenting with Union minister G Kishan Reddy, who was recently appointed to lead the state unit. The expulsion of Bandi Sanjay Kumar, who was outspoken in his criticism of the Telangana government, has provided the Congress the opportunity to assert that the BJP and the in power Bharat Rashtra Samithi had a secret agreement. The BJP is still looking for a foothold in the northeastern state of Mizoram where it is a junior partner of the Mizo National Front (NMF).
The BJP runs a significant risk by relying mainly on a top-heavy electoral campaign with Modi, Shah, and party chief JP Nadda since mid-level leadership has not yet risen to the challenge. This chink in the BJP’s defense would not have been as obvious as it is today if the opposition had been weak along the lines of Gujarat.
The BJP’s adversaries in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana include strong regional connections and battle-tested political figures. Strong rivals include people like Kamal Nath, Ashok Gehlot, Bhupesh Baghel, and K Chandrashekhar Rao. Like he did with Siddaramaiah in Karnataka, Modi will have to face them head-on and hope for a different outcome.
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