BJP chief Amit Shah (second from left) along with party workers at a public meeting at Tohana in Haryana on Monday. (Press Trust of India)
Amit Shah, the president of the BJP, had clear instructions today for voters at a rally in Haryana. "Press the lotus symbol (BJP's poll symbol) so hard that when the button is pressed in Haryana, the current is felt in Italy," he said, swiping at the Italian origin of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Haryana, currently governed by Mrs Gandhi's party, votes for its next government on October 15. The results will be declared four days later.
The BJP has said it will not declare a chief ministerial candidate and will instead ask voters to support Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the national election in May, Mr Modi powered the BJP's victory of seven of the eight parliamentary seats it contested in Haryana.
Recently, the BJP unhitched its three-year-old alliance with the regional Haryana Janhit Congress, led by Kuldeep Bishnoi.
The BJP co-governed Haryana with Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) led by Om Prakash Chautala from 1999 to 2005. While the Congress, whose current government is headed by Chief Minister BS Hooda, will try for a third consecutive term, Mr Chautala, who split with the BJP years ago, hopes to make a comeback - the 79-year-old who has served four times as Haryana Chief Minister is currently on bail after being jailed for corruption.
Over the last few years, critics of the Congress and a senior Haryana bureaucrat, Ashok Khemka, have alleged that the state government doled out sweetheart land deals to Mrs Gandhi's entrepreneur son-in-law, Robert Vadra. The Congress denied the charges, even as Mr Modi and other BJP leaders highlighted the alleged corruption ahead of the national election, and the issue was raised again today by Mr Shah.
"If this time, people of Haryana commit a mistake, then you should take it for granted that your land will again be acquired for peanuts and you will get nothing while the coffers of their sons-in-law will fill up," he said.