Desertions test BJP’s Hindutva agenda in UP

POLITICIANS do not usually dump a winning party to join a losing force. The dramatic defections from the BJP to the SP in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh do indicate that the Opposition is gaining momentum. On January 11, important OBC face and Labour Minister Swami Prasad Maurya, along with some MLAs, resigned. More bad news for the BJP followed the next day when the Minister for Environment and Forests, Dara Singh Chauhan, also quit. The seats from where Maurya and Chauhan were elected fall within the region referred to as Purvanchal, the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh that extends to the border with Bihar.

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Maurya’s seat Padrauna is 70 km from Gorakhpur, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s constituency, where he remains the head priest of a religious order. Likewise, Chauhan’s current seat, Madhuban, is 90-odd km from Gorakhpur. The CM himself will contest from Gorakhpur Urban, a safe seat for him, although there are intriguing reports about why the BJP top brass decided against making him contest from Ayodhya.

But first, the ministerial desertions indicate that the national party’s carefully woven social coalition of non-Yadav OBCs is in danger of coming apart (A third minister, Dharam Singh Saini, from Saharanpur, also quit the BJP on January 13). The BJP had managed a phenomenal social engineering feat, getting the support of both backward and forward castes in the nation’s most populous state that sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha.

Leaders such as Maurya and Chauhan were important OBC faces who would not have been denied tickets by the BJP. Their exit suggests they are responding to the mood of their voters. East Uttar Pradesh and Bundelkhand are far poorer than the western parts of the state bordering Delhi and Haryana. If rooted OBC leaders like Maurya and Chauhan have ditched the BJP on the cusp of an election, it also means that they believe the SP-led Front could be in a position to defeat the ruling party.

Between December 11, 2021, and January 13, 2022, 19 BJP members joined the SP-led front. Fourteen of them were sitting MLAs and this figure is expected to go up. According to data collected by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), between 2016 and 2020, 182 MLAs from across the country joined the BJP while only 18 left the party. Defection of MLAs was a factor in the BJP forming governments in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Goa and Manipur (the last two states also vote in this round of Assembly elections). But the point is that when a reverse trend begins, it suggests that something is going wrong for the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh.

The BJP is not one to roll over and accept defeat in the face of setbacks. What is worrying for them, however, is that the departing ministers and legislators have framed their resignations as being due to the regime’s insensitivity to backward castes and Dalits. Since Adityanath Yogi is a Thakur, the most muscular forward caste in the state, the desertions have inevitably been positioned by SP as a backward caste revolt against the forward castes. The BJP has already begun responding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “the biggest OBC leader” but this is a state election. So far, the BJP’s attempt to make this election Narendra Modi vs Akhilesh Yadav, the SP chief, has not succeeded. It is, after all, a state poll and the SP leader has calibrated it as Akhilesh vs Yogi.

Still, the BJP does have an upper hand in party structures, cadre, financial resources, social media outreach and in the event of a hung mandate, a friendly Governor. And regardless of chaos in the ranks, the RSS-run ideologically motivated cadre does booth management down to the last solitary outpost. The SP is also a party rooted in the state, but works very differently from the BJP. The SP will be giving tickets, in view of many aspirants, to the candidates most likely to fight hard in each constituency. Yet, it is a challenge to accommodate so many new entrants into the front when the party itself is well established in the state.

The SP Plus front is fighting the election tactically, seat by seat with multiple small caste parties. The BJP, conversely, is still going with the big narrative around Modi, Yogi, welfarism and Hindutva. Now that the tickets are being distributed, separate social media cells for each seat will also be activate but broadly the BJP social media works as a broadcaster of speeches of the PM and CM along with content used to discredit Akhilesh, keep the focus on othering Muslims and bolstering the Hindutva ideology and symbolism.

There is now a touch of desperation in the push on hardline Hindutva. Besides, the CM’s statement that the election is between 80 per cent and 20 per cent (Muslims make up 20 per cent of the electorate), is the most memorable thing he has said this poll season. Perhaps the party genuinely believes this is the push that will get it through; these are certainly the prime ideas the CM seems to have. Now, however, after the defections, he had to showcase himself having food in a Dalit household on January 14.

The SP, meanwhile, is in the process of upping its social media campaign as many volunteers and professionals have now stepped in. Strategically, they will seek to dominate the news cycle and try to create the news as opposed to just responding to it. The messaging will be about economic issues along with positioning the fight as that of forward versus backward. They say they want the social media to also amplify people’s voice beyond that of Akhilesh Yadav and want a two-way conversation and a lighter touch. Akhilesh Yadav himself has done a good job in media interviews that are now being widely circulated.

The state machinery, both in the state and Centre, is with the BJP. With the Election Commission having put curbs on rallies and roadshows, BJP leaders/workers are more likely to get away with violations in the door-to-door campaigns that candidates will depend on.

It is known that the current dispensation can be vindictive against opponents. Indeed, an old case against Swami Prasad Maurya was mysteriously revived the day after he quit the BJP. Income tax raids have taken place targeting those believed to be holding the funds of the SP, although in one instance, the authorities allegedly goofed up, going after a businessman with a similar name to an SP backer.

The BJP is a formidable force that began this battle with a mammoth 40 per cent of the vote in the 2017 elections. What is working best for the BJP is the support of those who got houses under government schemes and a regular supply of free rations. But the national party is still shedding some voters and leaders and if this continues, then the battle would begin to be described as a wave election against them.