THE two-day national executive of the BJP held in Allahabad on June 12-13 has confirmed the division of labour between the Modi-Shah duo. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi harped on vikas and his government’s commitment to push forward development, the BJP president Amit Shah spoke about the Hindutva issues such as the alleged exodus of Hindus from Kairana in Western Uttar Pradesh. The national executive, being held in Uttar Pradesh, focused on the BJP strategy for the forthcoming assembly elections in the state to be held by February 2017. Modi promised to make Uttar Pradesh a developed state if the BJP is voted to power. Amit Shah, on the other hand, laid out the well-tested Hindutva agenda which had served the BJP so well in the 2014 Lok Sabha election when the party won 71 out of the 80 seats. The citing of the so-called exodus of Hindus from Kairana town in the presidential speech was a calculated attempt to create communal tensions out of a false story. The BJP MP from Kairana, Hukum Singh, had claimed that 346 Hindu families had moved out of town as they faced threats to their lives presumably from Muslims in the area. After this charge was leveled by the BJP MP giving a list of the families affected, the entire BJP national leadership and even the union home ministry got into the act. The enquiries conducted by the district administration showed the spurious nature of this charge. The media also effectively revealed the true facts. It was found that most of the people in the list had left the town years ago in search of better jobs and livelihood. A few were not alive at present. Though the Kairana exodus theory has been effectively debunked, the very fact that the BJP national leadership took it seriously and sent an eight-member team of MPs to enquire into the matter shows the way the communal agenda would be raised in the run-up to the elections. In fact, it is in the neighbouring area to Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, that large-scale migration of Muslims took place due to the violence unleashed on them in September 2013. The other aspect of the BJP national executive is the concerted bid to propagate and build up Narendra Modi’s supreme leadership of the party and the government. The political and economic resolutions concentrated on the achievements of Narendra Modi in the two years of his government. What is in the making is the building up of the cult of an authoritarian leader. In the promotion of the image of Modi as the leader, what is missing in the resolutions adopted is the dismal plight of the economy and the people. While the BJP meeting was on in Allahabad, the mass exodus of the drought affected peasantry and rural poor from the Bundelkhand region in the state was ongoing. The latest inflation figures show a sharp increase in food prices. The index of industrial production for the month of April registered 0.8 percent decline year on year. Shirking employment opportunities face the 1.3 crore Indians who enter the job market every year. The celebratory rhetoric at the executive about the two years of the Modi government stood in sharp contrast to the grim realities facing the country. (June 15, 2016)