New Delhi/Mumbai: Outfits with the Sangh Parivar are putting in special efforts in their campaign for the Maharashtra assembly elections, aiming to galvanise Hindus and consolidate their votes, following the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) lacklustre Lok Sabha poll performance in Maharashtra.

Members of the outfits, however, maintain they are neither campaigning for any particular party nor telling voters to vote for any one. Their only aim, they say, is ensuring that the majority vote is in favour of the Hindutva agenda.

“This is no longer a hidden fact that in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, a party got 99 seats by only indulging in vote jihad,” Salekar claimed, without naming the Congress party. “Why shouldn’t Hindus unite and vote for the candidate of a party that looks after their welfare? We have been witnessing cases of love and land jihad in Maharashtra, too, and an atmosphere of fear is being spread as the Hindu community is being targeted.”

‘Love jihad’ is a term the BJP and Sangh Parivar members use to refer to interfaith marriages or relationships started allegedly for converting Hindu girls to other religions. With ‘land jihad’, they allude to an alleged conspiracy by the Muslims to acquire land parcels and edge out Hindus.

Introduced after the Lok Sabha polls, the term ‘vote jihad’ alleges the consolidation of Muslims against the Narendra Modi-led government. In the context of Maharashtra, politicians such as Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis have used the term.

The BJP won just nine of Maharashtra’s 48 Lok Sabha seats this year. The ruling Mahayuti, including the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), together won 17 seats. The opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won a whopping 30 seats. One seat went to an Independent candidate, a Congress rebel, who ultimately aligned himself with the Aghadi.

“In the Lok Sabha election, the voter turnout was poor. Many Hindus did not turn up to vote. Our first aim in our campaign this time is to ensure 100 percent voting. The second aim is to ensure voting for Hindutva, for the party that built the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and that scrapped Article 370,” VHP’s Shrirang Nair told ThePrint.

He said that all Sangh Parivar outfits, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, the Durga Vahini, the Matrushakti, and so on, have hundreds of volunteers fanning out across Maharashtra’s 288 constituencies with this message.

In the Lok Sabha election, Maharashtra had a 61.02 percent voter turnout.

Also Read: 6 regions, 36 districts & 288 seats: How to read Maharashtra’s electoral map

Increasing voter turnout 

VHP’s ‘jan-jagran (public awareness)’ initiative aims to increase voter turnout, especially in Muslim-dominated constituencies, a VHP functionary told ThePrint.

“We saw how in Raigad (a district in the Konkan region), Hindu families living in a society could not put up decor according to their culture. It is a serious issue, and all the more puts the onus on us to take steps to save our culture and tradition. The ‘jan-jagran’ initiative aims at informing and making the Hindu community aware of who they should vote for in these crucial elections,” he added.

Salekar said the initiative aims to ensure a pro-Hindu government comes to power in Maharashtra.

“We saw what happened in Bangladesh; the situation of Hindus there. We are seeing how things have become difficult for the Hindu community in West Bengal. So, we are simply informing the people of all that has happened and what a pro-Hindu government can do for them,” he added, while maintaining the VHP does not push for any specific party.

He also maintained that the VHP is making the people aware of the fact that if the MVA comes to power, it will take measures that are “against the Hindu community”.

“We know that if the MVA comes to power, it will have a Muslim deputy CM. It will also strengthen the Waqf board and will not allow the amendments proposed to take place. This atmosphere of fear is already there among the voters,” another VHP leader claimed.

Sant sammelans & ‘vote jihad’

Unlike the Lok Sabha polls, there is “greater and better coordination” between the Sangh Parivar and the BJP this time round, something that was found missing during the campaign for the Lok Sabha polls as a large section of the RSS cadre stayed away from election work, leading to a reduced tally for the ruling party.

“In the Lok Sabha elections, we saw how the Opposition used the caste card to divide the Hindu votes. They carried out misinformation in the name of reservation policies, and this led to the BJP’s overall tally getting reduced. We are urging the Hindus to stand united and not get divided along the caste lines,” the VHP leader quoted earlier said.

Apart from the public awareness programme, the VHP is organising more than 25 ‘sant sammelans’ of religious seers to consolidate Hindu votes for the Mahayuti.

“The idea behind these mass meetings that are taking place for the first time is to ensure that the Hindu vote doesn’t get divided, especially along the caste lines, as it happened during the Lok Sabha elections. Several VHP functionaries, spiritual leaders and sants will participate in these meetings,” said a senior BJP functionary.

Several such meetings are being held in Mumbai, Latur, Nagpur, Akola, Beed, Jalna, and Nashik, among other places.

Officially, the VHP maintains that during these meetings, it will not be canvassing for a particular party but appeal to voters to vote for a party that works for the welfare of the Hindu community.

BJP leaders are organising similar ‘sant sammelans’ to consolidate Hindu votes. At one such meeting of seers in Mumbai’s Vile Parle area last month, BJP MLA Mangal Prabhat Lodha hosted over 20 heads of temple trusts across Mumbai. At the event, the party circulated a list of 14 talking points, all underscoring how Hindus are in danger.

The list, a copy of which ThePrint has seen, alleges there are many social, religious, and political challenges due to the illegal immigration of Muslims; that the Muslim community has bullied Hindus at the grassroots into taking over traditional jobs, such as that of vegetable-sellers and iron smiths; and that Hindu religious festivals are being opposed.

It also warns how there’s allegedly been an unexplained spurt in the Muslim population and number of voters in some villages, that Hindu women are scared of walking the streets alone and that parties such as the Congress are supporting those responsible.

Members of the Sangh Parivar and the BJP are also highlighting alleged ‘vote jihad’ with what they call specific examples.

A BJP leader cited the example of the Dhule parliamentary constituency, where a lead for the Congress in the Malegaon assembly segment made the BJP’s leads in all other assembly segments of the parliamentary constituency redundant. Malegaon has a significant Muslim population.

Leaders from the BJP and VHP discuss how similar voting patterns were also seen in other constituencies, including Amravati, Beed, Parbhani, Solapur and at least two constituencies of Mumbai.

Conversely, Hindu consolidation against the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, they say, worked in the Mahayuti’s favour in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, formerly Aurangabad.

Nair said, “The situation was very different in the Lok Sabha elections. Now, it is very different. Karyakartas, after the Haryana results, are charged up.”

The BJP won the Haryana assembly elections last month with its best-ever performance in the state. It won a third consecutive term after winning 48 of the total 90 seats.

“In the Lok Sabha elections, a wrong narrative was being spread about how the Constitution will be changed if the BJP comes to power and how the reservations will be scrapped. This time, we are ensuring that no wrong narrative is spread,” Nair added.

(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)

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