As Congress prepares to elevate Rahul Gandhi to the top party post, Bharatiya Janata Party's Gandhi and his ideological digressions to 'left of the centre' keeps on flummoxing the party as it gives final touches to its Uttar Pradesh strategy.
Just days after registering an emphatic victory in Assam, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) functionaries on deputation to the party and micromanaging election strategy in poll bound UP started consultations with key stakeholders in the state. The consultation process is part of the larger exercise to assess and evaluate views within.
Others in contention are some old hands like former UP CM Kalyan Singh and some fresh ones like HRD Minister Smriti Irani, Gorakhpur MP Mahant Adityanath and Union Culture Minister Dr. Mahesh Sharma.
But the meeting with Varun in particular assumed importance as among all the aspirants, he is seen to be a lone ranger whose political line of action of late has puzzled many.
Varun’s last major assignment for the party was in West Bengal in the run up to 2014 general elections. Maintaining a low profile since, he has been organising political rallies and functions in UP independent of the programmes charted by the organisation.
He’s done that in the past and he continues to do that in the current regime. The only difference it seems is earlier he would also take one senior central leader along.
With the entire state under the spell of severe drought, most of his public functions recently have been held in areas of agrarian distress.
All this, it seems, has certainly not gone unnoticed with the party.
Now this is a far cry from the Varun of 2009. Contesting his maiden election from his mother’s den Pilibhit in UP, Varun in the run up to the polls had to spend a good three weeks in Etah jail for a purported hate speech.
Since his acquittal in the case, he seems to have shifted both his base and politics. He now represents Sultanpur in Lok Sabha, a constituency well ensconced within Nehru-Gandhi stronghold in the Awadh region.
The rabble rousing has been replaced by articles and discourse aimed at an image makeover.
It is this subtle but a deliberate and concerted shift of stance to the political 'left of the centre' which has set the cat among the pigeons. As the BJP attempts to build a poll narrative for UP, any jarring notes out of sync with the party strategy can be niggling irritants.
BJP would want to avoid those. Not long time back, during Bihar polls, sporadic incursions by dissident like Shatrughan Sinha embarrassed BJP no end.
As it finalises its UP strategy, the party is carefully weighing all the options. With the elevation of OBC leader Keshav Maurya as state president, there is a view that an upper caste should be made the face of the party campaign.
Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh’s name is also doing the rounds as chief of the campaign committee. He’s seen to be one backward leader with a fair bit of acceptability amongst the forwards castes of UP.
It is expected that final decision on the CM candidate will will be taken after due deliberations. Till then the RSS has asked BJP to devise a robust strategy and focus more on chalking out programmes at the grass roots.
But if in its final assessment the BJP decides to play the Hindutva card again, then it would want to avoid any confusion within its rank and file. Juxtapose a Varun having a divergent line of campaign even as Mahant Adityanath in ochre robes is at his rabble rousing best.
It takes all sorts to make the world. In electoral politics however, among other things, clarity both in terms of campaign and leadership tends to yield favourable outcomes.
Attempting to stitch a seamless campaign, BJP thus wants the Sultanpur MP to walk and talk with the party.
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