BJP counts wars within amid lengthening losses
Image credit UP Information Department
Yogi Adityanath faces leadership test
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, July 18: Political stature of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath may be compared only with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The sheer size of Uttar Pradesh also gives the position of the chief minister a place of eminence
After holding the post of the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, the political heavyweight naturally eyes the post of the prime minister.
Late Vishwanath Pratap Singh treaded that path decades ago to first lead a massive rebellion against then prime minister late Rajiv Gandhi and afterwards inflicting crushing defeat on his erstwhile political master in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP’s pride was bruised in the electoral battleground of UP. The prime minister’s victory margin fed to viral tales in the political circles.
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Members of ‘Team Modi’ had to bite the dust in UP. While Adityanath guarded the eastern flank firmly, grounds under the western and the central sank for the BJP.
Anupriya Patel, a junior minister in the council of ministers headed by Modi, suggest having opened a front against Adityanath. She is shooting off letters to the UP government.
First, Patel alleged that the government jobs, otherwise reserved for the backward castes, are being “given away to the upper castes”. Her second shot at Luknow has been a latter citing “irregularities at the toll plaza”.
In the political circles, Patel is not seen as a lone wolf. Another junior ally in the UP BJP, Sanjay Nishad, spotlighted “wrong bulldozer actions” for the electoral losses un the state.
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While both Patel and Nishad watered the slippery grounds for the turf war within the BJP, deputy chief minister of UP Keshav Chandra Mourya rushed to the national capital. He indeed believes that he could have become the chief minister of UP in 2017.
The three musketeers — Patel, Nishad, and Mourya – are undoubtedly firing their ammunitions at Adityanath. The central BJP leadership in the last one decade has shown through actions that the party prefer to clip wings of the regional satraps.
BS Yediyurappa, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje, Raman Singh, Raghubar Das, Manohar Lal Khattar, and Devendra Fadnavis make a formidable long list of satraps who saw their wings clipped.
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Unfazed with sharpening spotlight on him, Adityanath continues with business as usual, while his office stokes “Yogi hai to yakeen hai” slogan to strengthen ‘Brand Yogi’.
The BJP faced serious reversals in Lok Sabha poll fortunes in UP, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana, and West Bengal. But the spotlight has come on Adityanath.
The Lok Sabha reversals extended to the Assembly byelection. The BJP won just two of the 13 Assembly seats, and there was no bypoll in UP.
The BJP lost the Assembly bypolls in Himachal Pradesh (1/3), Uttarakhand (0/2), and West Bengal (0/4) hands down. Thus, the BJP’s lengthening losses in elections is a pan-India phenomenon
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