The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Gorakhpur City BJP candidate makes do without Yogi, RSS
ONE SEAT in Gorakhpur that captures the fissures within the Sangh Parivar is Gorakhpur Urban. The BJP’S Radha Mohan Das Agrawal, MLA since 2002, is campaigning without help from the RSS or MP Yogi Adityanath, whose writ dictates saffron politics here.
Agrawal never holds public meetings and has no election office; he travels in his Maruti 800 to “meet people directly”.
As with the RSS and BJP leadership, the city’s politics divides into two camps — promath (Goraksh Peeth headed by Adityanath) and anti-math. Sources close to Agrawal, widely known as RMD, say he has complained to RSS leaders about some pracharaks working against him. Still, says one of his election managers, “Woh kuch bhi karein, RMD ko hara nahi sakte, bhale hi thoda margin kam ho jaaye (Whatever they do, they can’t defeat RMD, even if his margin comes down).”
On Wednesday morning, after addressing a meeting of booth-level workers, Agrawal tells The Indian Express, “I have the blessings of all. Among workers with me, there are no RSS swayamsewaks, only my own. I don’t depend on RSS workers for political work; they are busy mobilising voters.”
Agrawal, a paediatrician, won the seat in 2002, 2007 and 2012. It was Yogi who recommended him the first time, but the MP is now said to have opposed his candidature in party forums. Yogi hasn’t addressed any public meetings in Agrawal’s area so far. On Thursday, however, a roadshow by BJP chief Amit Shah is set to feature Yogi along with the candidates of Gorakhpur Urban and Rural. Brahmin leader Shiv Pratap Shukla is expected to accompany them to send a message that there are no internal differences.
Asked about Yogi’s absence from his campaign so far, Agrawal says, “I have not held any public or nukkad meeting. I go from door to door and meet people, that is my strength.”
In the equally divided BJP, district president Rahul Sriwastava is considered close to Yogi. Asked if it is true that he has largely skipped Agrawal’s campaign, Sriwastava says, “We are working at full strength for every BJP candidate.”
Across the region, many pracharaks upset with ticket distribution are working without the enthusiasm they showed in 2014. Several eastern UP pracharaks, posted elsewhere, had been intimated in November that they would need to be home for the polls. But one pracharak in Gorakhpur at Madhav Ashram, the RSS’S Goraksh Prant headquarters, confides, “When tickets were announced and Sangh leaders got upset, some pracharaks were told they not need come.”
RSS workers have largely restricted their role to encouraging voters to turn out. The RSS and other frontal organisations minus BJP were meant to appoint coordinators at booth, sector, assembly seat and district levels. Many places remain with few workers.
In Gorakhpur, in a coordination meeting organised by the RSS Sunday, almost half the 600 attendees were acharyas of Saraswati Shishu Mandirs. Prant pracharak Vinayak Khandekar reportedly said 90 per cent of booth-level coordinators have been appointed. But another pracharak tells The Indian Express, “The fact is that we don’t have so many workers. Many swayamsewaks avoid these meetings because of the feeling that BJP leaders distribute tickets arbitrarily, and persuade RSS workers to work in the national interest. After winning, the MLAS don’t care about us.”