The BJP too managed to draw in huge crowds at what it called its 'Mahakumbh' in Bhopal
Overwhelmed with the turnout at the BJP’s public meeting at the Jamboree Ground of BHEL in Bhopal, party president Rajnath Singh remarked that he had never seen such a large gathering in his entire public life. No less ecstatic was party’s prime ministerial candidate Lal Krishna Advani. He asked Madhya Pradesh BJP president Narendra Tomar if he could tell him the exact number; prompt came the reply: 3,70,738. (It was not known if party workers from neighbouring districts, sitting at that time in Indian Coffee House, over 10 km away, were also included in this total).
The meeting, called by the BJP as ‘Mahakumbh’, was held two days after Uma Bharati’s massive show of strength. It was planned several weeks ago. However, after seeing the numbers at Bharati’s rally, a desperate Shivraj Singh Chauhan charged his ministers to spare no effort to ensure a bigger turnout than at Bharati’s; means did not matter. The Congress and Bharatiya Jana Shakti leaders were quick to accuse the ruling party of blatantly misusing government machinery and arm-twisting government employees to get the crowds at the party rally.
However, at the end of the exercise, the chief minister had little consolation. None of the central leaders spoke in the context of the coming Assembly elections in the state, which is the uppermost concern in Chauhan’s mind. They did not appear to have noticed the problems the people in the state are facing: the steadily deteriorating law and order problem, deaths of children from malnutrition across the state, spread of malaria and dengue in several parts of the state, the chronic problems of drinking water and electricity, and, of course, mounting corruption in the government. But then, if they shied away from the people’s problems, it could be because they had nothing to commend Chauhan for.
All that Rajnath Singh said was that Shivraj Singh Chauhan is not only a chief minister but also a Jana-Neta (people’s leader). He promised that Mohammad Afzal would be hanged in a trice when the BJP came to power at the Centre after the 2009 elections. Former BJP president Murli Manohar Joshi said that the US-India nuclear deal was more beneficial to the US as it would open up new avenues of investments and employment for that country while India would lose its capacity for nuclear tests for many years to come.
Following the trail of distress left in the BJP by Uma Bharati and her vitriolic attack on the prime ministerial candidate, Advani appeared out of sorts, harping on how the Rath Yatras undertaken by him and Murli Manohar Joshi had changed the political atmosphere in the country and how the Congress was dislodged from power in 1977, 1989, 1997 and 1999 and how the <New Statesmen> (of London) had noticed the BJP’s growth after the 1989 elections. He looked hopefully on 1999 when the BJP victory in the Lok Sabha elections, he said, would be the victory of the entire country.