More trouble than triumph

Radhika Ramaseshan

Senior Journalist

Yogi Adityanath’s sense of triumph on display last week may be transient because of the muddled politicking that has beset the BJP in UP in the walk-up to the Assembly polls. The CM was believed to successfully resist the induction of Arvind Kumar Sharma, a former Gujarat-cadre IAS officer, in his Cabinet because Sharma, who was part of PM Modi’s cabal of bureaucrats since 2001, was perceived as a proxy for Delhi in Lucknow. Adityanath reportedly feared that Sharma’s instatement in his governing council could have thrown up a challenge and created a second power centre in the nucleus. Sharma, who was recently elected as a member of the legislative council, was appointed a vice-president, one among 17 others, in the state BJP organisation. In keeping with the one-person-one-post norm, the position effectively puts him out of the reckoning for a berth in the Adityanath ministry in future. Even as Adityanath might have prevailed in this phase of a face-off between the Centre and UP, the last has not been heard. Delhi indicated it will not yield in the joust for one-upmanship.

A perceptible fallout of the Adityanath-Sharma episode was, far from consolidating the CM’s leadership in the polls, it raised questions. A week after Swatantra Dev Singh, the UP BJP president, stated that Adityanath was the ‘undisputed’ leader, Keshav Prasad Maurya, the deputy CM, said the matter would only be reconciled after the elections. On Monday, another minister, Swami Prasad Maurya, added weight to the deputy CM’s line, saying that the final decision on the next CM would be arbitrated by the Central brass on a later date.

The leadership tangle, just seven months before UP votes, is a throwback to the historic state elections of 1993, held a year after the Babri mosque was razed. The polls were billed as a referendum on the demolition and the expectation was the outcome would be in the BJP’s favour. However, an opposition coalition of the SP-BSP beat the BJP by a whisker in a surprise verdict. A major reason for the reversal was the BJP’s failure to resolve the ambiguity over the authority of its erstwhile CM Kalyan Singh.

Adityanath is placed in a different zone. He’s not from the BJP or the RSS, their writ does not run over him and he merely uses the lotus symbol to fight elections. That makes him an outlier, a status he used to his advantage as the CM. He strengthened and expanded the Hindu Yuva Vahini, which was set up as his private militia in Gorakhpur, his home turf. It has morphed into a BJP competitor the state over. The BJP is unhappy not just with the Vahini.

Adityanath is accused of pandering excessively to the Rajputs, the caste he belongs to and accommodating their representatives at every echelon of the administration and police. The statements that came from the Mauryas are deliberate. Keshav Prasad and Swami Prasad are from the OBCs who form the BJP’s backbone in its recent incarnation as a party of the less-empowered OBC and Dalit sub-castes. To retain its character and colour, it is imperative for the BJP to shake off the ‘pro-Rajput’ label it acquired under Adityanath.

Even Swatantra Dev Singh, who endorsed Adityanath’s captaincy, balanced his statement by singling out the CM’s ‘integrity and honesty’ as his principal attributes. Like Modi, Adityanath is often commended for being single, ‘distant’ from his family and keeping his relatives and favour-seekers at arm’s length. Is this good enough to sway the extraordinarily large electorate that rooted for the BJP in 2017 before Adityanath was declared the CM?

Left to himself, Adityanath would cast his political persona entirely in the Hindutva mould and identify himself with the BJP’s core issues and more, chief among which is the Ram temple in Ayodhya. The about-to-materialise temple is the centrepiece of his politics because his spiritual mentor, Mahant Avaidyanath, raised his political career around the Ramjanmabhoomi ‘movement’.

To compound Adityanath’s troubles, the temple has got mired in allegations of malfeasance and corruption. An investigation by a digital media outlet revealed that several acres of land around the so-called disputed structure in Ayodhya were allegedly acquired from their owners, who were reportedly close to local BJP leaders, at prices several times in excess of the stipulated circle rates. The land will be part of the temple complex, whose construction is overseen by a government-constituted trust, the Sri Ramjanmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. A trustee is listed as a legal witness in one of the questionable land transactions. Additionally, the SP and the Aam Aadmi Party alleged that in another case, land was bought by the temple trust from a certified absconder who is related to a BJP leader. The alleged deals kicked up enough of a furore in Ayodhya for prominent mahants, tangentially associated with the trust, to demand a probe.

The temple — estimated to be built at a cost of Rs 1,100 crore by Swami Govind Dev Giriji Maharaj, the trust’s treasurer — is projected to be completed by 2024, in time for the Lok Sabha elections. The Adityanath dispensation showered exceptional bounty on Ayodhya, promising to extol its status to that of a ‘model town’ on a budget of Rs 640 crore, allocated for 2021-22. However, the real estate pacts have cast enough of a shadow over the grandiose blueprint for the PM to call a virtual meeting with the CM and his officers on June 26 and discuss Ayodhya’s future.

In the end, the Centre’s trust as well as the Adityanath government have to account for the transactions if the BJP’s temple showpiece has to emerge and stand unscathed.

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