Hindutva still BJP’s key electoral plank
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 — the first big electoral test for Adityanath who swept to power in March — and Lok Sabha polls in 2019.
“Having successfully made inroads into the OBC vote bank of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Dalit base of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2017 UP election, the 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.
The Opposition is up in arms with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav accusing the BJP of playing “an emotional, religious card”.
“This government is merely trying to divert public opinion by playing up such issues,” Yadav said in Meerut on Sunday.
BSP president Mayawati, who has already announced plans to hold a rally every month in UP and to contest the November’s civic polls on her party symbol, is expected to raise the issue during her public meeting from Azamgarh – the parliamentary constituency of Samajwadi Party patron Mulayam Singh Yadav – on Tuesday.
But the BJP is unfazed and on Monday, began screening candidates for the rural body polls.
“For 15 years, you saw how a particular community was suppressed in the name of appeasement. Now, as we work on restoring the balance after having declared plans to work on ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ our political rivals are seeing politics in it,” said state BJP leader Manish Shukla.
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