Malegaon blast accused Pragya Singh Thakur being taken to a sessions court in Mumbai on Monday. (Fotocorp)

Ujjain, Nov. 24: This ancient town, famous for the Mahakal temple dedicated to Lord Shiva and for holding the Kumbh mela every 12 years on the banks of the Kshipra river, is also considered a bastion of the BJP since its early Jana Sangh days.

But despite the deep religiosity of its people, the case of sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur — who happened to work as an ABVP activist for four years in this very town — causes hardly a ripple in these parts.

If L.K. Advani and Rajnath Singh are trying to whip up anger against the “injustice” meted out against Hindu saints with an eye on the Madhya Pradesh polls, Ujjain indicates that they could be barking up the wrong tree.

Outside the Mahakal temple, where scores of sadhus with matted hair beg for alms, little boys try to sell you baskets of flowers and prasad, and devotees queue up for hours to get a darshan of the jyotirling deep inside the bowels of the temple, Rajendra Joshi offers to conduct a special worship for us.

Joshi, a pujari working in the temple since he was a young lad, is not offended when we refuse his offer and readily discusses the election scene instead. “BJP candidate Paras Jain may win because there are a few Congress rebels in the fray this time,” he says.

What about the sadhvi’s arrest? He looks a little surprised at the question. “What does that have to do with the election?” he asks, as a couple of other priests inform us that the main issue this time is “vikas (development)” and whoever has “worked for the people” will get rewarded.

Chandrakanta Rathore, a loquacious woman who runs a shop selling “religious items” bang opposite the temple, is equally bewildered that the sadhvi could be an election issue.

Yes, she has heard of Pragya who happened to teach in the school her son now attends. “Par chunav prachar mein unka naam bhi nahin hai (but her name does not figure in the election campaign),” she says, confessing that she belongs to a family of BJP supporters.

A couple of shops away, Ajay Tiwari — who was an ABVP activist and is set to join the BJP’s Yuva Morcha — explains why issues like the Maharashtra anti-terrorist squad’s investigations are not cutting any ice with the people.

“You see, most people now have become very selfish — all they are interested in is their own welfare. If an MLA does not perform, if he does not keep his promise of bringing development, he will be voted out,” he says, adding that in Ujjain North (under which the Mahakal temple falls), sitting BJP MLA Paras Jain may well lose to the Congress’s Batuk Shankar Joshi — even though Muslim candidates fielded by the BSP and the Samajwadi Party were cutting into the Congress’s vote.

Tiwari is also candid in his assessment of the BJP’s prospects in Ujjain district as a whole. The party won six of the seven seats last time; this time, the tally could come down to just two.

“The BJP will do well in the state but only because of Shivraj Singh Chauhan — he has done a lot,” he says.

As we go into the rural areas of the district, we discover that Tiwari is both right and wrong. The BJP is clearly out of favour but the “CM factor” isn’t working here.

In Dabri village, which falls under the Ghatiya (SC) seat, the complaints against the BJP (even though the party did not field its unpopular sitting MLA and gave the ticket to a new candidate) are endless.

One villager after another tells us: “They promised us 24/7 bijli (power) but we don’t get it for even three hours a day; BPL rations have been reduced from 35 to 15kg and we don’t even get that because the ration shop opens only two days a month. We stand in line from morning to night but our turn never comes. The Indira Awas Yojana scheme under which BPL families got pucca houses has been scrapped…”

As for the chief minister, Harish Malviya — a Congress supporter — grudgingly admits that Chauhan has a good image. “But he cannot become chief minister on his own, he needs MLAs to vote for him and no one will vote for the MLAs who have done nothing in the past five years.”

If the rural seats of Ghatiya, Tarana, Mahidpur and Nagada are set to ditch the BJP, the situation in Ujjain town is not that much better. In both Ujjain North and Ujjain South, the BJP is banking not on Pragya and Lt Col Prasad Purohit but on Congress rebels to see them through — never mind the rhetoric of the party’s national leaders.

Having burnt its fingers on the Ram temple issue in the 1990s, the BJP switched to the “development” theme five years ago. It is now discovering the perils of promising too much too quickly to too many — especially in an age where rising aspirations have displaced for good the old fatalism.