BSY-Modi meeting green lights BJP move to woo Muslims

Shivamogga: The BS Yeddyurappa- Prime Minister Narendra Modi meeting in Delhi on Tuesday has broken new horizons in political management in Karnataka. Prime Minister Modi has directed the State BJP "not let down the Muslim fraternity and gain their confidence and support for the programmes of BJP governments in both centre and state" said Yeddyurappa, BJP Parliamentary Board member.

Looking more confident than ever in the last year after the meeting with the Prime Minister, Yeddyurappa said Prime Minister Modi's observations will be carried out in action and in the spirit of the state.

This new direction from Modi has opened up a few closed doors to the BJP in the state and this could have a resounding effect if the BJP leaders in the state and their cadres play their cards well. The BJP will start contacting the liberal Muslim leaders at the Jamaat level, to begin within a bid to gain the confidence of the Muslim fraternity. 'But it is not for just the votes, we see a great vision in the direction of Prime Minister Modi, which is to totally integrate the Muslim fraternity into the total socio-political diaspora of the country and stop using them as captive vote banks of the other parties' say the 'enlightened' political honchos in the BJP.

he guidance of Prime Minister Modi has had a calming effect on most of the leaders in the party who were otherwise showing radical dispensation and were vouching for polarisation. The new understanding of the Muslim community in the BJP has sent shivers among the leaders of the other parties that use Muslims as their vote banks, the BJP now wants its share of Muslim support for basically a non-political reason which appears to be convincing.

The political analysts have already begun brainstorming over the possibilities of sizable Muslim votes now turning towards BJP which will not only increase the vote share of the party candidates in the Assembly elections and depending on this factor things might also look different for the parties that treat Muslim community as their vote banks in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Even a minor swing in the Muslim votes to the extent of 10-15 per cent BJP might be able to gain that many seats from Congress and JDS. This is just a beginning but if this model is replicated in other states, things will look a lot better for the BJP and gloomier for others. But this new scenario will have to be galvanised into reality only through the diligent work of the cadres at the ground level and leaders at the higher levels. The party does not know if their leaders who followed a radical course, may be able to mend their ways and see the reason behind Modi's guidelines.