In Uttar Pradesh, Hindutva still takes centre stage for BJP

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s push to promote Hindu pilgrimage sites in recent months has sparked a political controversy with experts saying the move indicated that Hindutva will remain a key poll plank for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of crucial elections.

The opposition has protested the state government’s decisions to allocate funds for holy Hindu sites and leave out others – in the temple town of Ayodhya alone, projects worth ₹483 crore have been unveiled in six months while the Taj Mahal has received a fraction of the funds — and called it “selective development”.

But political analysts say the push is part of a careful BJP strategy to retain the Hindu vote ahead of rural body elections scheduled later this year and Lok Sabha polls in 2019.

“Having successfully made inroads into the OBC vote bank of the SP and the Dalit base of the BSP in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2017 UP election, the BJP is eager to ensure that Hindus continue to vote for it, something the RSS had been working on for quite some time,” said Athar Siddiqui from the Centre for Objective Research and Development.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a two-thirds majority in the assembly poll on a development plank with the PM promising to make Uttar Pradesh — one of India’s poorest states — into a manufacturing and jobs hub.

But analysts feel that the saffron party wants to keep alive Hindutva issues that propelled it to national importance in the 90s, on the back of a movement around the Ram Temple.

The Ram Temple issue, along with plans to rebuild temples “ignored” by previous regimes, have made a return to the state government’s agenda.

Adityanath has also made special budgetary provisions to develop the temple towns of Mathura, Varanasi and Ayodhya.

The government is looking to develop other religious sites such as Chitrakoot – where Hindu god Ram is believed to have spent a majority of his 14-year exile – and hold the Ardh Kumbh in Allahabad in 2019 on a grand scale.