Till the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) parliamentary board succumbed to the pressures of those deserting the party, there was great merit in the argument that most who have left were to be denied a ticket to contest the upcoming Uttar Pradesh polls by the party leadership. The BJP top brass believes that anti-incumbency against the party can be smothered as they continue to enjoy support from castes whose leaders may have left them. It is also convinced Prime Minister Narendra Modi's charisma is enough to help the party win the polls - UP Chief Minister Adityanath Yogi did not matter. Both these assumptions will be vigorously challenged in the forthcoming election.
Modi, not Yogi, is BJP's UP face
In recent months, the point about Modi being the face of the UP polls has been obsessively re-emphasised, despite the burst of advertisements with the tonsured head of Adityanath adorning them. It was evident during the inauguration of the Purvanchal Expressway, too, when poor Adityanath was left stranded on the road as the PM's bulletproof limousine whizzed past him.
Similarly, when the Kashi Vishwanath temple's exteriors were redone, after pulling down hundreds of old houses and temples and the ghats redesigned, it was Modi again on whom cameras spent copious time when he walked down to the holy Ganges river and took a leisurely dip in its cold waters. No one was in sight, least of all the hapless Adityanath, who is now facing the opprobrium of his disgruntled party workers, some of whom have deserted the BJP. More would have gone if there was an assurance from Akhilesh Yadav that they would be given tickets and accommodated in the Samajwadi Party (SP).
Modi again took the credit for providing free rations to the poor - a freebie that could get the BJP re-elected. "No one's name is really discussed in our neighbourhood except for Modi's. We do not talk about Yogi, Behenji (BSP chief Mayawati) or Akhilesh, but about Modi and debate here is whether he will give us free rations after March 2022," informed a domestic worker in Lucknow.
Then there was a campaign by the PM to show that all the vaccines being administered free to people was due to his benevolence. In a certain way, all these actions that Modi and his government has taken seek to diminish Chief Minister Adityanath and every other minister or legislator of the party. By this logic, how does it matter if you have Tweedledee or Tweedledum as ministers or MLAs, claim Modi supporters.
The exit of non-Yadav OBC leaders
But this was not so in 2017 when the BJP assiduously extricated many non-Yadav Other backward Castes (OBC) leaders from the embrace of the SP and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Some 100 odd defections were carefully organised by Amit Shah, keeping in mind their caste profile to fill up the gaps in the party. These included many unknown vote gatherers who make a difference between victory and defeat in elections. Several of them are not the people that any party parades in front of the cameras but are anonymous influencers and give heft to a leader. That's why a leader's defection is not complete until they also bring along their aides and followers. Recognising their worth, many who crossed over with their leaders have been looked after well by the party bosses. In other words, the party leadership has managed to cannibalise the support that these leaders bring in and dump their leaders after use.
Also Read -- Desertion impact: OBCs dominate BJP's first UP list
Quite visibly, leaders like Swami Prasad Maurya and a few others sensed the designs of the BJP leadership. They read the mood on the ground and decided to jump the ship before being pushed out. By doing that, they have tried to hit at the strategy of Modi and Shah to preserve the layers of support of non-Yadav OBCs by promising upper-caste co-option by giving them a share in power. At every stage, this large chunk of non-Yadav OBCs has been hurt in the five years of BJP rule. The wrath of the pandemic fell on them, as they comprised the majority of the migrants that returned to the villages of the state. Pandemic not only disfigured their lives but also put a spanner in their ambitions. State leaders claim that what happened in UP was the doing of the Centre as they have no role to play in the exodus of the migrants. What followed during the second wave showed up the hollowness of their much-vaunted preparations for the next wave of the virus. Should Adityanath or Modi take the rap?
The farming factor
There's another issue where people that have been on the wrong side of the horns of the snorting bulls and cows could be ambivalent about who is responsible for their misery. A section of the OBC's - Khatiks - who grow vegetables for a living have suffered from the government's obsession to ban beef and allow the stray cows to meander in towns and villages. Any physical assault on the animal is forbidden and could attract severe penalties and state-supported anger of the cow vigilantes. There are many horror stories of the havoc that footloose cows and their calves have caused to people's lives. Villagers living near the Nepal border have even herded them stealthily in the dark of the night to the neighbouring country, believing that no harm will come to them from fellow Hindus.
However, these voices from the hard-pressed rural communities would have been silent if not for the raw courage displayed by the farmers of western UP, who had supported the BJP since the communal violence of 2013 that rocked this region and extracted the Jat community from their traditional voting options. For three elections - 2014, 2017 and 2019 - they mostly voted for the BJP. The farm agitation and the manner in which the central government made them agitate for about a year before it meekly submitted to their demands has made them angry. Here, Adityanath was not involved. Firstly, Jats have seemingly patched up with Muslims that farmed and worked alongside them in the fertile verdant lands of western UP. The BJP had made the Muslim vote irrelevant after they stopped voting with Jats after the Muzaffarnagar carnage. If indeed this born again social coalition stays together, it will have a far-reaching impact on other parts of the state. Like it has been the practice past few elections, the first phase of polling will take place in western UP and how the voters interpret the pattern of voting will have a bearing in other phases too.
Be that as it may, the BJP is no pushover. People recognise that all the factors that brought it to power in 2017 simmer quietly even now. Akhilesh Yadav's love for his caste brethren at the expense of other castes when it comes to appointing them to key positions and the political space that he would extend to minorities at a time when the Sangh Parivar has communalised the environment could be an imponderable that has not been factored yet. What it means is that the elections are far closer than previously understood, and it will be a bigger test for PM Modi than the tonsured monk that hopes to win back the state.
(The author is the Editor of 'Hardnews' magazine)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.