‘Leadership change unlikely in Uttar Pradesh’

LUCKNOW : The losses in Noorpur and Kairana bypolls just over two months after the equally stunning upsets in Gorakhpur and Phulpur have activated chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s detractors in the BJP.

But his aides say a leadership change is unlikely in the state, even though the losses hurt the party.

Any leadership change at the moment will make it appear that Yogi is being made a scapegoat, they say, adding since taking over as the chief minister he has lived by the ‘BJP rulebook’.

Political observers say rather than taking the risk of changing the leader less than a year before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the party will prefer to balance caste equations in a reshuffle of the Yogi cabinet that now assumes even more importance.

“Everything is possible in politics and yes, the knives may be out again. So, a leadership change as an option to blunt antiincumbency, might be an option but then the advantages the monk-chief minister brings to the table are far more,” a BJP leader said. The party leadership has reportedly asked for a review of the result. Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah is expected in UP soon. He may hold several rounds of meetings with state leaders on the Uttar Pradesh strategy to thwart the budding alliance.

“Faced with the politics of fatwas and unprincipled alliances, we still won two of the five assembly segments (in Kairana). But we were finally outdone by the alliance which, however, won’t be able to stop Modiji from becoming PM again,” says UP BJP chief Mahendra Nath Pandey.

One of the advantages of Yogi is he is viewed as caste neutral, his aides say. “Monks don’t have a caste and so he fits into the perception of being viewed as a monk politician rather than be remembered for his upper caste Thakur past, which he left behind on becoming a member of the Nath sect and thus is now helping spread the RSS’s message of burying caste differences and uniting Hindus,” a BJP leader says.

Yogi had actively campaigned in the bypolls as did deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. In March, the BJP lost the Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls which were held after Yogi and Maurya vacated their seats.

Now, the results of the Kairana and Noorpur bypolls have given fresh impetus to talks of opposition unity against the BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, party leaders admit. They agree that party chief Amit Shah’s target of ’80 seats and 50 per cent votes in UP’ for the state leadership now looks ‘highly ambitious.’

“We are a cadre based party with solid organisational base. Yes, the losses have hurt, but it will be unfair to single out anyone person for this. It’s a collective failure,” a Yogi aide says.

The Bharatiya Janata Party strategists have been stunned by the fact that the opposition was successful in making alleged non-payment of sugarcane dues to farmers an issue in the sugarcane belt even as their own bid to polarise the election by raising the issue of ‘Jinnah’ in the middle of the bypoll failed to cut much ice.

“More important is the fact that the Jat-Muslim chemistry that lay in tatters post Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 is back again and this will hurt us in 2019 in west UP where we swept both the 2014 Lok Sabha and in 2017 UP polls,” a BJP leader concedes.