Test ahead for BJP in UP: Will it blink or tame Yogi?

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath was in the national capital last week to discuss political, governance and administrative issues with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union health minister Amit Shah and BJP president J.P. Nadda, to tighten loopholes and raise the BJP’s prospects in the Assembly election due early, 2022. Earlier, complaints were being voiced by BJP leaders in UP, and there were even murmurs that the PM and the CM might not be on the same page.

In this backdrop senior BJP and RSS leaders visited Lucknow to take stock and held confabulations in the national capital afterward. There was fevered speculation that the CM may have to be changed. Given all the excitement, the CM’s visit to New Delhi was followed closely, not least because he had very lengthy talks with Mr Modi, Mr Shah and Mr Nadda.

It would have become clear to all concerned that the UP CM is not a BJP leader in the normal sense and the usual rules of party discipline do not apply to him. He is the head of a centuries old religious establishment. Politically he is aligned to the Hindu Mahasabha. Hindu Vahini, the outfit he created, is a more extreme practitioner of Hindutva than any other outfit. Nevertheless, he has BJP connections because this party has sent him to Parliament several times and elected him to be its leader in the UP Assembly in 2017, catapulting him to the position of CM.

Adityanath is not collegial in his ways. He is a religious right-wing maverick. His administrative actions have been widely perceived as dictatorial. He has no party factions or party favourites and relies on a clutch of bureaucrats, a trait he shares with many chief ministers, including Mr Modi when he was the Gujarat CM. He goofed up on pandemic management big time. The BJP naturally feared he might lose the party the state polls, if allowed to run unchecked.

But can he be checked? If he were to break away, it is not unlikely that he can cut into a section of the saffron party’s vote bank that is emphatically communal. The BJP can ill afford this specially when there is said to be considerable disenchantment, flagged by Covid mishandling.

In light of this it is possible that the ideas produced in the CM’s consultations in New Delhi will lead to organisational changes in the state BJP and in the council of ministers in the state. However, any comment on these will be premature since the Yogi is his own man and not quite subject to BJP discipline. Changes that may follow in the wake of the CM’s meetings in the national capital will naturally be watched by all — not just the BJP. The Opposition parties too will wait to see if there emerges a chink that they can exploit. Evidently, the situation is not as conducive for the BJP as it was before the pandemic.

With all preparations now moving toward the election, it will be interesting to see if the CM has a significant hand in the selection of the BJP’s candidates for the upcoming state poll. That may provide a clue to the state of the power balance between the CM and the traditional BJP power structure.

Adityanath goofed up on pandemic management big time. The BJP naturally feared he might lose the party the state polls, if allowed to run unchecked.