There is a view that the Bharatiya Janata Party is currently in the fourth position in Uttar Pradesh — after the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Samajwadi Party and the Congress. And as it readies for the next round of campaign for Assembly polls in the summer of next year, party leaders do not deny this grim reality.
The major reason for this cited by them is that while voters may be coming round to the conclusion that the Mayawati government must go, they have not yet zeroed in on an alternative. And for this reason, if no other, the BJP took the decision to project the former Chief Minister, Rajnath Singh, as the overall election in-charge for the State.
Among all the party leaders from the State, Mr. Singh has the best credentials as a leader opposed to Ms. Mayawati, even when the BJP was in an alliance with the BSP. He opposed aligning with the BSP, arguing that it would damage the BJP in the long-run even as the BJP helped Ms. Mayawati three times to become Chief Minister.
Party vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said last week the BJP was now preparing for a ‘chaupal' (public space) style campaign from August-September after a round of some eight public rallies over the last three months and many ‘padyatras.' It is planning a series of intense interactions between party leaders and villagers under a ‘chaupal' ending with a ‘samuhik bhojan' (meal taken collectively).
While admitting that the party position is not very good – considering that it at one time returned more than 56 MPs from this State alone, Mr. Naqvi was of the view that the party must present itself as the desired “alternative” to the Mayawati government.
Demanding an investigation by the CBI into the reported systematic “loot” of money given to the State under the National Rural Health Mission, Mr. Naqvi signalled that the party intended to add corruption to its existing plank of poor law and order in the State. His charge was that the Centre was looking the other way while hundreds of crores meant for rural healthcare was being siphoned off. “Crime and corruption in U.P. will be our twin planks,” he said.
The party is also depending on the fact that both the SP and the BSP are supporting parties of the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre to carry the message to the people that it is the BJP, not the Congress, which is the real alternative to the BSP and the SP.
The ‘chaupal' campaign, which will be founded on “interaction” (‘sampark') with the villagers, will project two major leaders — Mr. Rajnath Singh and Kalraj Mishra, who is the campaign-in-charge. It was clear from this that a major ingredient of the BJP's strategy is to bring back to its fold the upper caste vote that was solidly with it during the height of the Ram temple frenzy in the State.
Mr. Singh is a ‘Thakur' and Mr. Mishra a ‘Brahmin,' and with this the BJP wants to signal that it will give upper-caste leadership in the State, a big change from the days when it believed in “social engineering” and promoted Kalyan Singh, a backward caste leader.
Although quite recently the party took back backward caste Uma Bharti and said she would work exclusively in U.P., it seems to have decided not to project her as the BJP's face in the State, lest the upper-caste votes go to the Congress.
