NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP’s chief strategist and Home Minister Amit Shah are conspicuous by their absence in the last leg of the campaign in the poll-bound Haryana.
Both leaders did not address any rally today, and also have nothing scheduled for tomorrow, the last day for campaigning for the October 5 Assembly elections.
Modi held his fourth and last rally yesterday at Palwal, while Shah held his last three rallies in the state on September 29. In the absence of Modi and Shah, other senior leaders, including Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari, are holding fort for the saffron party.
Modi held just four rallies in the poll-bound state. This is in sharp contrast to the 10 election rallies addressed by him in the 2014 Assembly poll and seven in the 2019 Assembly poll.
Terming the development “surprising”, a senior BJP leader said like senior Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Mallikarjun Kharge, both Modi and Shah too should have organised rallies or road shows on the last two days of canvassing to boost the BJP campaign against the backdrop of the party facing anti-incumbency.
“In almost all recent parliamentary and state Assembly elections, the latest being in Karnataka, Modi was in campaign mode till the last moment,” the BJP leader said, adding that the presence of big leaders in the election campaign makes a lot of difference to a party’s electoral fortunes.
Another senior party leader, however, asserted that the BJP’s star campaigners, including Modi and Shah, had organised over 100 big rallies across the state over the past few days. “As a last-ditch effort, the saffron party has decided to organise a massive outreach across the state through door-to-door campaigning,” he added.