Art 370, TT and turncoats key to BJP’s UP by-election plan

Unmindful of criticism, the party has opened its doors to turncoats

LUCKNOW: On the day when Rajkumari Ratna Singh, three-time Congress MP, was praising the BJP after joining the party in presence of chief minister Yogi Adityanath in Pratapgarh, the UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh was busy drafting an opposition party candidate as BJP campaigner in Kanpur.

Both Kanpur and Pratapgarh are among the 11 seats due for by-polls on October 21. In each of these seats, the BJP has mobilised its cadre to effect defections in the opposition camp as part of a two-fold strategy, aimed as much as winning the bypolls as preparing the ground for the 2022 assembly polls.

“The Congress opposed BJP government’s move on Article 370 in Kashmir. Forget leaders, Congress would now lose even its trusted cadre too,” chief minister Yogi Adityanath has been saying in his bypoll rallies. The abrogation of instant triple talaq practice is also being cited prominently in an apparent bid to divide the Muslim vote, political leaders admit.

Adityanath is supervising defections of big leaders while deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya, Dinesh Sharma as well as ministers are busy contacting locally influential opposition figures.

The party has roped in senior UP ministers like Swami Prasad Maurya, Brijesh Pathak, Nand Gopal Nandi and Surendra Nagar to contact opposition leaders. Maurya, Pathak and Nandi were important leaders in the BSP who joined the BJP, while Nagar was a prominent Gujjar leader of Samajwadi Party, who along with former PM Chandrashekhar’s son Neeraj and Sanjay Seth quit the SP for the BJP. The BJP candidate in Pratapgarh Rajkumar Pal, contesting on ally Apna Dal ticket, was till a few years back with the Samajwadi Party.

“We welcome such defections as these expose the BJP thoroughly. They seem to have run out of loyal cadre and hence are banking on turncoats. Take it from me, the party is getting desperate and it has started showing. The bypoll results would shock the BJP,” says Samajwadi Party leader IP Singh, who was previously with the BJP.

“These defections are also causing friction in the BJP at the local level. You may have noticed the ugly fights that broke out at several places during BJP internal polls,” he says.

But unmindful of criticism, the BJP has opened its doors to turncoats. Surendra Katiyar Chandra, Govindnagar contestant of Jan Adhikar Party, floated by aide of former BSP chief Mayawati and with whom Congress had inked a pact in the 2017 UP polls, too has joined the BJP.

Along with Saleem Ahmad, who was BSP’s mayoral candidate in Kanpur in 2006, former SP leader Rajendra Sharma, SP’s exblock pramukh Shashikant Singh among many other political turncoats and several local Congress leaders, Surendra is among the party’s campaigners.

“The BJP is the best party at the moment and that’s what we are telling the people,” said Surendra who also praised party’s decision on Article 370 which he claimed is also striking a chord with the people.

Such defections in virtually all

› They (BJP) seem to have run out of loyal cadre and hence are banking on turncoats IP SINGH, Samajwadi Party leader

the by-poll seats, are being marketed as endorsement of BJP moves by opposition leaders.

In Gangoh assembly seat in Saharanpur, BJP has got leaders like former lawmaker and BSP’s zonal coordinator Ravindra Kumar Molhu, Dharmendra Gautam, district BSP chief in Gangoh, BSP’s Saharanpur district chief Rishipal Gautam to join. In Gangoh, Congress leader Imran Masood’s brother Nauman Masood is the party candidate and to upset his plans the BJP also got former Congress MLA Sushil Chaudhary to join its fold. “We don’t get affected by turncoats,” said Imran Masood when asked if defections would impact results.

In Jalalpur, Keshav Prasad Maurya got some locally important opposition players to join the BJP after which he claimed that the party was all set to breach the few remaining opposition citadels too. Maurya was referring to Rampur, a seat BJP has never won, and Jalalpur which BJP has won just once in 1996.

“Azam Khan knows his bastion is cracking. Several leaders of his party have joined us and more are waiting in the wings,” said BJP’s west-UP in-charge Vijay Bahadur Pathak.