The state Bharatiya Janata Party has put on hold the campaign against black money as Anna Hazare's agitation for a Jan Lokpall Bill to free the country of corruption has caught the popular imagination. It now intends to corner the state Congress on the issue of corruption ahead of the assembly polls next year.
The BJP is confident that the charisma of chief minister Narendra Modi and the development in the state under BJP rule will sweep the party to victory in the assembly elections in 2012. For this reason, as Hazare's movement has the whole country in its thrall, the saffron party wants to capitalise on the corruption issue.
The BJP has put its students' wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), and its state youth cell, at the forefront of the pro-Hazare campaign in the state in a bid to influence youths who will be crucial voters in the polls. For the last couple of months, the BJP and its youth cell are staging protests only against corruption at the Centre, and party leaders, too, have been issuing statements against the Congress on the same lines. The youth cell has already conducted 28 Maha Sammelans in the last three months, besides a big protest outside Parliament on August 9.
A BJP leader said that it is time for the party to play its masterstroke against the Congress which had dislodged the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) from power in New Delhi.
"We are not worried about our prospects in the state as Modi can single-handedly lead us to victory here. What we want is that the party should capture those states where the BJP was in power earlier," the leader said.
He further said that Anna's movement is very much like the Jayprakash Narayan movement of 1974. "It was after this movement that the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar came to power. Jan Sangh, the name by which the BJP was known earlier, also became strong after JP movement," the BJP leader said.
Yet another leader of the party said that the current public outrage over corruption can bring the party more benefits than even the nationwide rathyatra of BJP veteran LK Advani.
"We should not become complacent but use Hazare's stir for our benefit. BJP will organize various programmes in the coming days," he said.
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