Last week was extremely crucial for the BJP’s electoral journey in two states, one in the south and one in the east, that have been impregnable fortresses that have remained out of the party’s reach, even as it has dominated nationally.While in Tamil Nadu that the party, especially Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has designated as a top priority, the BJP is a junior ally, in West Bengal, it is a make-or-break battle that is labelled as its “final frontier” and where the stakes are more than just an electoral win.AdvertisementFor the BJP, capturing these two states will be a major milestone. Both of these states were part of the BJP’s “Coromandel blueprint” that was prepared after it emerged as a dominant pole in Indian politics. The blueprint laid out the long-term plans to expand across the eastern and southern coastline, focusing on winning more seats in West Bengal, Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.Shah and the BJP, backed by Modi, have mounted an aggressive push to unseat Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress, which is striving to retain power for a fourth consecutive term. Shah has camped in West Bengal, where the campaign concluded on Monday, with his trusted lieutenants such Union Minister Bhupender Yadav and national general secretary Sunil Bansal, among others, for the past two weeks.AAP defectionsSome BJP leaders also linked the defection of seven of the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) 10 Rajya Sabha MPs to the BJP’s resolve to win West Bengal. With the Raghav Chadha-led group now in the BJP, the ruling party’s strength in the Rajya Sabha has increased from 106 to 113, while the NDA’s tally has gone up from 141 to 148, 15 short of the two-thirds majority mark in the Upper House.AdvertisementBut it’s more than those numbers, claimed BJP insiders. Sources said BJP leaders had been in touch with the AAP MPs for months and their switch had been on the cards for a while. However, there was a reason to choose the date, said sources. The unexpected announcement — BJP President Nitin Nabin flew from Kolkata to Delhi in the early hours of April 24 — had lifted the morale of the party workers in West Bengal, BJP leaders claimed. They pointed out that the spectacle came a day after Chief Minister Banerjee said she would dethrone the BJP from the Centre after winning Bengal. “I will take over Delhi … I don’t want power, I want the BJP’s destruction,” she said at a public meeting in Howrah.“The development in Delhi, a day after the threat, shows that the BJP has taken it as a challenge. It was a message to Mamata Banerjee as well as to Arvind Kejriwal and the Opposition, which is basking in the glory of its recent success in the Lok Sabha,” said a leader. The NDA had failed to muster up the two-thirds majority required to pass the Constitutional Amendment Bill linked to expanding the Lok Sabha and operationalising the women’s reservation law.Splitting the AAP’s Rajya Sabha team is also meant to support the BJP’s plans in Punjab, where it wants to grow as an independent alternative force, and Gujarat, where the AAP has become a significant political force opposing the BJP’s dominance. Party sources said Chadha and Sandeep Pathak will now be utilised for the party’s strategising in Punjab.In Bengal, both the TMC and the BJP have claimed that the massive turnout in Phase 1 was in their favour. BJP leaders said while the TMC has projected the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as an issue, the crisis of potato farmers was a bigger issue that affects the lives of people. It is something the BJP raised in rally after rally.you may like“There is a huge crisis after a bumper crop and a steep fall in prices, which happened because of the faulty policies of the state government, including the restrictions on exports to neighbouring states. Mamata Banerjee and her party are trying to hide the issue behind their claims on the SIR exercise. But people are more concerned about the potato crisis,” said a senior BJP leader.Experts, however, point out that the turnout was bound to jump as a result of the SIR that shrunk the voter list by 11%. In Tamil Nadu, DMK spokesperson Saravana Annadurai attributed the rise in turnout (it was 84%) to the decrease in the size of the electorate.“The percentage is higher because the denominator has come down. This is elementary mathematics. You have brought the number of voters down by introducing SIR. That is bound to happen. That is not something unprecedented, nor is this something which is out of the way, as some claim. Whoever tracks numbers, especially linked to an election, they are very clear that this is a normal thing,” he said.