There is an air of political invincibility in Lucknow. A confident Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, during the party’s state unit training session in Chitrakoot earlier this month, enhanced his earlier target of 75+ Lok Sabha seats in 2024 to the ambition of sweeping all 80 seats.
In the Samajwadi Party camp, the party which put up some fight with 111 seats in the state elections less than four months ago, the attention seems more on 2027 state elections rather than 2024. This seems apparent from Akhilesh Yadav choosing to retain his assembly seat of Karhal and not even campaigning for the Lok Sabha by-polls in strongholds of Azamgarh and Rampur, where the losses have left the party cadre deflated and confused.
The drift is showing in smaller fights too. Like in last week’s MLC elections in the state, the nomination paper of an SP candidate was rejected as she was underage. This was not checked even though Akhilesh Yadav was one of her proposers. The party is down to just three Lok Sabha seats, with the BSP at 10 seats and Congress at one seat.
BJP Focussing on BSP in 2024
A senior UP BJP leader told News18 in Lucknow that the real challenge to BJP in 2024 could come from the BSP rather than the SP. “In UP, the Muslim-Dalit combination (which BSP is aiming at) is a much bigger one than the Muslim-Yadav combination (which is SP’s stronghold). Mayawati has learnt a lesson from the Azamgarh bypoll where her candidate Guddu Jamali came third, polling a huge number of votes, that ensured the SP lost the seat. It will be premature to rule out the BSP,” the BJP leader said.
BJP believes that Mayawati is now focussing on the Muslim-Dalit combine and especially winning Muslims back into her fold after they majorly voted for the SP in the assembly elections. Two district-level BSP leaders told News18 that Muslims have realised that going with SP has not brought them any results so far. BSP holds 10 Lok Sabha seats though SP leaders say this is because SP got the “tougher urban seats” during the 2019 SP-BSP alliance. “Muslims have seen how Mayawati has backed the BJP’s Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates…they know she is BJP’s B-team,” a senior SP leader said.
Yogi Model
Traveling on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway to the state capital last Wednesday, one could see multiple trucks carrying brand-new bulldozers, epitomizing what has come to be known as the ‘Yogi Model’. The bulldozers, razing ‘illegal properties’ and cleaning land of encroachments, have electorally benefited the BJP in the last UP elections. Recently, Karnataka CM Basavaraj Bommai — after being under fire from his party cadre over the murder of a BJP worker — said his government will adopt the “UP model” if it is required.
“CM Yogi Adityanath is not hesitant in taking any decision – there is complete clarity in decisions. He has made law and order into a positive-vote issue for the BJP while in the past, governments have been voted out on law and order issue in UP. People who have not even been to the state are now talking about the Yogi model in Uttar Pradesh,” a top-serving UP bureaucrat told News18.
Another key official said the removal of nearly 75,000 loudspeakers from religious places of all hues in the second term of the Yogi government was a major move in direction of the Yogi model. “Loudspeakers were removed both from temples and mosques. In some cases where temples and mosques were adjacent, first the loudspeaker of the temple was removed so that the mosque would not object when authorities went there. All this was done without any hassle and to ensure sound of the speakers remains inside premises of the compound,” an official said.
Similarly, the chief minister was clear that neither would Namaaz be allowed on the roads nor Hanuman Chalisa be chanted on intersections, another official recounted. This, BJP leaders say, has led to a perception amongst people that Yogi is a ‘no-nonsense CM’ and action will follow if laws are broken or someone creates a situation of a riot. The BJP is now aggressively marketing this ‘Yogi model’ in UP.
Next BJP State President?
Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, BJP is now carefully weighing in on the choice of its state president after Swatantra Dev Singh became a minister in the state government in March and gave up the state president chair last month. An option on the table is to appoint a Dalit face as the state president to counter the anticipated challenge from the BSP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
There is also speculation that BJP may bring back Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya as its state chief after he had led the party as the state chief to the big win in the 2017 assembly elections in the state. A Dalit leader may be appointed Deputy CM in his place. Like Swatantra Dev Singh, Maurya is UP BJP’s OBC face. Another talk in political circles is that former Deputy CM Dinesh Sharma, a Brahmin leader, could be made state president in the effort towards balancing the Thakur-Brahmin equations in state politics. Sharma has a good equation with CM Yogi.
Recent controversies like suspension of PWD Minister Jitin Prasad’s aide over corruption and resignation of a Dalit minister of state, Dinesh Khatik, over transfers in his ministry, have troubled the state government briefly but are unlikely to rock the BJP’s boat in Uttar Pradesh in the run-up to 2024. CM Yogi Adityanath’s control over the largest state in the country seems virtually unchallenged.
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