ALTERNATE NARRATIVE IS STILL MISSING

Even as the electioneering for the Gujarat State Assembly has gone into its top gear and the media all over the nation is agog with speculations, calculations and rumours about who will win the show, the clear victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the municipal elections in Uttar Pradesh has surely come as a relief for the party cadre in Gujarat. The BJP's decisive win on Friday in Uttar Pradesh's civic polls is 45-year-old Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's coming-out ball in his home state. Yogi ran a whirlwind campaign across the state and the results prove he was right to bet so big – the BJP has won 14 out of 16 corporations, two went to Mayawati in what suggests a ground-level resurgence of her BSP.

The spectacular victory for the BJP is seen as a significant verdict in favour of Yogi Adityanath. After his surprise anointment as Chief Minister in March, these results further cement his status as the new "Hindutva" icon that was deployed earlier to Himachal Pradesh and now to Gujarat. Note that his governance skills are still in question, not the least because of August's hospital tragedy in his constituency of Gorakhpur, in which nearly 60 infants died. Another big headline from this civic election is – or should be – that the BJP's Maya Tripathi lost Ward No 68 in Gorakhpur, home to the Goraknath temple of which Yogi is the main priest. Interestingly, his chief detractor and Amit Shah favourite, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, also suffered a setback with the BJP losing all six nagar panchayats in Kaushambi, his home town.

Mission 150

The big news has been that the BJP lost the Amethi Municipal Body. The BJP has chosen, of course, to highlight (with union minister Smriti Irani leading the gloating) the big loss for the Congress in Amethi, the constituency of Rahul Gandhi, where the BJP won the urban local body. Essentially, the UP civic elections give BJP leaders, such as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, a chance to say they were a referendum on the success of demonetisation and GST, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah can present them as a harbinger of the of the hotly-contested Gujarat result. Shah has already said that the UP civic polls are an indicator of his audacious "Mission 150" (of 182 seats) in Gujarat.

Actually, issues before state assembly elections and civic polls are vastly different and do not essentially reflect that mood of the electorate. However, while the BJP gave the civic elections the sort of passion and attention that has become characteristic of its approach to polls of any sort, which much the other parties were slightly more laid-back. For the first time, the BJP had issued a manifesto for the civic polls, and other parties, following the BJP's lead, also allocated their symbols to candidates.

Another salient feature of the UP Civic poll results is the success of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The Party Chief Mayawati, who had been completely written off after the UP assembly election, can take some solace with a minor come back – winning two corporations. Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party should be worried – the voters of UP are still completely disenchanted with him. The Congress appears to be in terminal decline in UP, worrying for a party which fancies itself as the country's premier opposition party. There are barely 18 months to go for general elections and UP accounts for 80 seats, which is the way to power in Delhi. The UP civic results assume importance on this backdrop.

The opposition parties in UP played many tricks to take on the BJP. The nascent alliance, which was being discussed between the Congress and the two regional parties, the BSP and SP, with Akhilesh Yadav publicly punting for a national election version of the same, seems to be a nonstarter with the state voters. Yogi Adityanath has kept the BJP's vote bank of upper castes firmly with him as these results indicate. But they also establish that Yogi has not unravelled the winning combination of the state election – upper castes and a section of the non-Jatav Dalits.

National media and many political parties, including the BJP are currently debating whether Rahul Gandhi is a "genuine Hindu" – how the country's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru did not want the Somnath temple in Gujarat, how Indira Gandhi held a handkerchief to her nose in Morbi. The Congress, which was taking on the BJP on economic issues and the “Gujarat Model”, appears to have got entangled in the "Janeu" (thread worn by Brahmins) after senior Congress leader RS Surjewala said that "Gandhi is a Janeu-wearing Brahmin". "We have allowed ourselves to fall in to the BJP's trap of who is a bigger Hindu. We cannot match the Saffron-clad Yogi Adityanath", rued a senior Congress leader, reflecting the frustration of the rank and file of the Congress.

Congress playing Hindutva card

What looks like quite strange, intriguing and weird strategy is that the Congress seems to think that trying to play the Hindutva games with the BJP is the way to electoral gain. Nobody is a better practitioner of this game than Modi. The UP civic results should be a wake-up call to the opposition.

As the Gujarat elections are at the door-step to be followed by similar exercises in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh next year, the opposition, particularly the Congress, must realise that whatever it is offering to the people as an alternative narrative has no selling points, apparently. Early introspection in this direction is essential as the nation is heading for the next Lok Sabha elections in barely 18 months from now. The clock is ticking! The author is a political analyst and former

Member of Parliament (RS).

AS the Gujarat elections are at the door-step to be followed by similar exercises in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh next year, the opposition must realise that whatever it is offering to the people as an alternate narrative has no selling points, apparently.