BJP smells the coffee

The Sangh Parivar regroups and re-strategises its moves to win UP and beyond

Enthused by its success in Punjab and Uttarakhand, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in an upbeat mood. The party leadership is giving an impression to its cadres and its supporters that it has what it takes to recapture the spirit of 1991 and get a majority in the crucial Uttar Pradesh(UP) assembly elections. In some ways, it has also been emboldened by the rise in communal temperature in crucial eastern UP where riots have contributed to bringing about communal polarisation — something that works greatly to the BJP’s advantage.

The Sangh Parivar realises that it needs to recapture UP if it wants to control Delhi in the 2009 parliamentary elections. To lend meaning to this vision, the Sangh Parivar has been holding strategy sessions and meetings in UP. There have been, in the last few months, three national conclaves in the state capital, followed by a three-day meeting of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Pratinidhi Sabha and Virat Hindu Sammelan of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) at Allahabad. Quite evidently, the Sangh Parivar wants to crank up its formidable election machinery so that it can get its voters on the day of the polls.

The BJP which has been a house divided for quite a while, used the three-day BJP national conclave to show unity to its cadres. The central leadership’s decision to project Kalyan Singh as the chief minister was supported by other upper caste leaders who have in the past, used every occasion to backstab the backward leader. So much so that Singh was driven out of the party and forced to play footsie with the Congress. Realising how factionalism could hurt the prospects of the party in these crucial elections, all the senior leaders, including LK Advani, AB Vajpayee and national president Rajnath Singh, advised the state leaders to sink their differences

and work for the victory of the party candidates.

Realising that the Sangh Parivar is synonymous with the building of the Ram temple, the three-day RSS conclave also pledged to keep the issue alive in different ways. In the reckoning of the RSS, revival of the Ram issue is important for social engineering and countering the growing influence of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). It has made a call for reaching out to the dalits and other backward castes that will help bridge the gap that eludes the party from getting a majority in the 403-member house.

By all reckoning, increasing the vote percentage is unlikely to be easy for the BJP. It has to increase this percentage which fell from 33.31 per cent in 1996 to 25.31 per cent in 2002, when it only won 88 seats. Last time, Kalyan Singh’s exit from the party contributed amply in bringing down this number. He had contributed to the defeat of 30 BJP candidates.

BJP will require a jump by over 10 per cent votes in order to form its own government.

BJP’s optimism is based on (besides the anti-incumbency wave sweeping the state against Mulayam Singh Yadav’s rule) its good performance in the local bodies’ elections where it won in eight municipalities. There is growing unanimity that the BJP is getting its urban-upper support base back in UP. This is despite some internal surveys which shows it getting a lowly 40 seats.

Besides the upper caste support, the BJP is aggressively wooing the backwards. It realises that it can get a quantum jump in its voting percentage only if it can get the non-Yadav backward castes in its fold. Its decision to make an alliance with the kurmi based party, Apna Dal, is an attempt in this direction. The BJP has been more than accommodative of Apna Dal and its leader Sona Lal Patel, having left 52 seats for them. Apna Dal had 3.78 per cent votes in the last elections. It is also trying to rope in another kurmi leader, Beni Prasad Verma, who left the Samajvadi Party recently, to ensure that it has the benefit of the entire kurmi support. BJP has given 132 seats to other backward castes (OBCs) and 62 to scheduled castes.

BJP’s ticket distribution has created a lot of heartburn in the party especially in amongst the upper caste. The day the lists were put up, the BJP office was ransacked and there were allegations that people with criminal backgrounds had been given tickets. Many of these dissenters enjoyed the support of leaders like Lalji Tandon and Kesari Nath Tripathi, both strong aspirants for the top post.

The ticket distribution antagonised the firebrand mahant of Gorakhnath Temple, Yogi Adityanath. This young mahant shot into the limelight after the riots in Gorakhpur which deepened the communal divide in this part of the state. The mahant wanted 35 seats for his supporters, but his claims were ignored by the central leadership. He threatened to leave the party and field his own people. BJP leaders tried to pacify him, but it did not seem to be working. If Adityanand fields his candidates then he could hurt the BJP grievously.