It’s a rarest of rare situation – that a highly billed event of a Prime Minister is cancelled, as has happened during Narendra Modi’s road trip to Ferozepur on Wednesday. A protest by farmers with “Modi Go Back” placards en-route caused a halt to traffic for over 15 minutes. This was seen as a serious security lapse. Recovering from an initial embarrassment, Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi now says there was more than what meets the eye. He says the cancellation of the meeting had more to do with the poor attendance – some 700 people— where the PM was to lay the foundation stones for some medical infrastructure projects. The Congress party too has cited this as the “hidden reason” behind the PM’s about-turn. True, a15-minute delay on the road by itself cannot cause the cancellation of the PM’s address. Worse, the PM has also cancelled a rally he was to address in Lucknow later this week, and his office cited “likely rain” as the reason. Put together, this could be a pointer to the shape of things to come in the string of assembly polls expected in February in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and some other states.
The BJP is no great shakes in Punjab though it shared power in the state with the Shiromani Akali Dal in the past, after which power went into the hands of the Congress party. With Captain Amarinder Singh quitting the CM post, exiting from the Congress and forming a party, the Congress too might have lost its steam there. The AAP is on the ascendant in Punjab as is also evident from the Chandigarh civic poll results. Also, the people in the state are evidently not enthused by the foundation-laying tricks in the run-up to the assembly polls.
The cancellation of the Lucknow rally could mean all is not well with the BJP in Uttar Pradesh too. While Yogi Adityanath continues to enjoy considerable clout, the SP of Akhilesh Yadav is also building the electoral tempo in the state. Perceptions are that the halo that surrounded the prime minister is slowly ebbing as his governance now fails to inspire the people. He had won the last Lok Sabha polls in the Hindi belt by virtue, largely, of the Balakot IAF counter-offensive in the aftermath of the Pulwama militant attack on a CRPF convoy. The second term of the Modi governance was plagued by the Covid pandemic, adding to the long phase of inaction on the governance front. Most likely, all these are bound to impact future electoral outcomes.
