Weak SP will harm our prospects, say senior BJP leaders

seats in the state in 2014, work on winning UP started even before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Amit Shah, who is now party president because of his emphatic turnaround record in the state, was made general secretary incharge of the state and Narendra Modi moved to contest the Lok Sabha poll from Varanasi. The party resorted to what Verma calls competitive social engineering, reaching out to communities — from the most backward castes to the Dalits and the nonYadav OBCs.

A victory for the party in UP will not just bring electoral gains, it will also showcase it as a stamp of people’s approval on two-anda-half years of the Modi government and its policies, including demonetisation and its aftereffects.

The BJP’s calculations say a weak SP will mean Muslim votes shifting to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Akhilesh emerging stronger will open the possibility of a grand alliance on the lines of the one in Bihar.

“Amit Shah had cleverly pitched the BJP against the SP and tried to downplay the BSP’s role as a challenger. A weak SP will force us to fight the BSP as our number one opponent,” says a senior leader.

The state will put the party’s social engineering formula to test.

“The BJP is moving towards a constituency transformation. It has decided to expand its base at the cost of its traditional voter and the UP election will put this to test,” explains Verma.