Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday unveiled a statue of former BJP CM and towering OBC face in the State, the late Kalyan SIngh, on Singh’s first death anniversary, in Lucknow.
Addressing a gathering after unveiling the statue at the Cancer Institute named after Singh, Mr. Adityanath recalled the leading role played by the late political leader him in U.P.’s development. The Chief Minister said, “Under the able leadership of late Babu-ji [Kalyan Singh], the roadmap for good governance was laid in the State. We cannot forget the contribution made by him for the development of the State.”
Through the event, the ruling BJP has begun its tacit outreach towards OBCs with an eye on the upcoming 2024 Parliamentary polls. “We have decided that the Bulandshahr Medical College will be named after Babu-ji and a similar statue will be installed there,” Mr. Adityanath said. In the coming days, the installation of over half a dozen statues of Singh is planned in the districts of western and central U.P., which have a large population of the Lodh or Lodhi community, to which Singh belonged. To the State’s west, the Lodhis account for more than 6% of the electorate and influence results in at least eight parliamentary seats as a strong non-Yadav OBC group.
Singh, under whose watch Babri Masjid was demolished by a group of Hindu kar sevaks (volunteers) on December 6, 1992, influenced a large chunk of OBC voters during the 1990s to join the saffron fold in Uttar Pradesh. Political analysts believe that his significance was heightened because he helped the BJP partly neutralise the challenge from the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the aftermath of the Mandal Commission.
“Kalyan Singh consolidated the Hindutva narrative within the OBC community, which helped the BJP in the long run. The alliance of upper castes and non-Yadav OBCs, which is the BJP’s success mantra in north India, started during his regime,” Manindra Nath Thakur, a noted political scientist who teaches at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, said. “The galaxy of Backward Caste leaders who emerged in the BJP during the early 2000s, such as Narendra Modi, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and many others, are the product of the successful Kalyan Singh experiment.”
Born on January 5, 1932 in the Madhauli village of Aligarh district, Singh joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) during his school days. He contested his first Assembly election on a Bharatiya Jan Sangh ticket from the Atrauli Assembly seat in 1962. From 1967 to 2003, he represented Atrauli nine times in the Assembly. He left the BJP twice but finally rejoined it before the 2014 General Elections. Due to his alleged role in the Babri demolition episode, Singh was widely considered a divisive figure in the State’s politics as the SP lost sizeable Muslim support during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls when it joined hands with him.
Singh, who served as the CM of India’s most populous State for about three-and-a-half years, carried out reforms in the education sector and enacted the Anti-Copying Act of 1992, which made the use of unfair means in examinations a non-bailable and cognisable offence.
