We have a day to go for Maharashtra and Jharkhand campaigns to end, with polling scheduled for Wednesday.

And the last stretch of campaigning is in full swing.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be in Gadchiroli, Katol, and Wardha seats of Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, BJP president will be in Jharkhand’s Sindri, Nala and Gomia seats.

In context of poll discourse: “Batenge toh katenge”, or the more positive-sounding “Ek hain toh safe hain”, is part of the BJP’s poll lexicon this Maharashtra campaign. The party has included the promise of an anti-conversion law in its manifesto, despite ally NCP’s unease over a Hindutva agenda, and is telling farmers that under the Congress, their land could be taken over by the waqf board.

Other party leaders have drawn a line linking the Congress to the Razakars of the pre-Independence Hyderabad State.

This ramping up of the BJP’s Hindutva narrative comes on the back of a long couple of months in Maharashtra when an organisation called the Sakal Hindu Samaj, with the backing of senior BJP leaders, held “anti-love jihad” rallies across the state. Closer to elections, top state BJP leaders including Fadnavis added “vote jihad” to the poll narrative, in an undisguised attack on minority voting patterns.

Wary of a Maratha-Muslim consolidation behind the Maha Vikas Aghadi, apprehensive of farm distress hitting it in rural areas which make up more than half the state’s constituencies, and seeking to check the Opposition’s caste census gambit aimed at backward groups, the BJP has fallen back on Hindutva issues to consolidate the Hindu vote.

The other incentive to go harder on Hindutva issues was the Lok Sabha results, with the BJP winning just nine seats, a sharp drop from 23 in 2019.

Following realisation that attempts to tackle caste and farmer issues by the party were not having the required success. A senior BJP functionary, requesting anonymity, admitted: “We had been confident that the course correction undertaken by extending welfare schemes to the agriculture sector would dilute farmer anger over low kharif crop prices. We never anticipated anger of such scale.”

What’s happening in Jharkhand: In the 2019 Assembly polls, the JMM-Congress-RJD alliance won 47 seats in the 81-member House, while the BJP won 25 seats.

Hemant Soren went on to become the CM. But a lot has changed since. In February this year, before his arrest in a money laundering case, Soren resigned as the CM to make way for then JMM leader Champai Soren.

Soren came out from prison on bail in July, but Champai did not give in easily. After some hiccups — which included allegations that he was “humiliated” by the party — Champai reluctantly stepped down as the CM. He subsequently went on to join the BJP.

In the recent Lok Sabha polls, the BJP lost all of the five Schedule Tribe (ST)-reserved seats, ostensibly due to the damage caused due to Soren’s arrest. As the CM is a strong tribal face with a significant mass support on the ground —- the JMM-Congress combine won 26 of the 28 ST-reserved Assembly seats in 2019 — his arrest and its legality would be a key campaign point for the INDIA bloc. Whether that again evokes tribal sentiments remains to be seen.

The BJP on Friday announced a 12-member manifesto committee headed by South Delhi MP Ramvir Singh Bidhuri to spell out its poll promises and vision for Delhi ahead of the assembly polls due in February next year.

With PTI inputs