Micro-management among non-dominant castes is BJP’s plan in Western UP to counter SP-RLD alliance.
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had started designing its strategy to counter the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance which had materialized recently. The repeal of the farm laws by the Narendra Modi government was also one of the steps taken by the saffron party to bring in its fold the western UP groups. Sources privy to the developments told The Sunday Guardian that the saffron party is designing a different strategy for the 147 seats of western UP where the social arithmetic and alliance formulations are different in comparison to the Eastern and Central Uttar Pradesh and is focusing on the micro-management among the non-dominant caste groups.
A senior leader of the party said, “For the BJP, the real challenge is western Uttar Pradesh. In Purvanchal, we are confident. but in western UP, we need to design a counter strategy against the SP-RLD-led alliance in which other parties like the Mahan Dal and even Azad Samaj Party might join in coming days. Our focus is micro-management among the non-dominant castes which if we combine constitutes more than 50% of the population in the region. It is also true that the opposition alliance on paper generally does not transform successfully on the ground. But we need to be ready with 45% plus vote share to counter any caste mobilization by the SP-led alliance.”
Every political party has accelerated their preparations on a war-footing in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh which is scheduled to go for polls early next year. In the last Assembly elections, the BJP won 312 seats on its own and the National democratic Alliance (NDA) got 325 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly out of 403. The Samajwadi Party emerged as the main opposition party by winning 47 seats out of 298 it contested in an alliance with the Indian National Congress (INC), which fought on 105 remaining constituencies. The realization in the saffron fold is that the opposition alliance is hyped by the media and not strong on the ground. Senior BJP leader Dinesh Dubey said, “What happened in 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the alliance between SP-BSP and RLD was called invincible by many. But, the outcome showed that we won more than 80% of the seats. Therefore, we are more than certain that the party would get more than 300 seats in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh elections.” In 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the NDA won 64 of the 80 parliamentary seats in the state.
Captain Abhimanyu, who is handling the western UP zone of the BJP and overseeing the poll preparation, is also reporting to the party election in-charge Dharmendra Pradhan and giving ground reports from the 140-odd constituencies of the region. Gaurishankar Chaturvedi, a Kanpur-based political analyst said, “BJP is seriously studying each constituency of the Western UP region, each district-charge took stock of their concerned district and submit report to Dharmendra Pradhan and regional in-charge, the specific task is how to touch 45% vote share. SP-RLD alliance is strong on 50-odd seats. Yadav vote is not more than five percent in the region apart from few districts while Jats are also numerically strong in few districts only. Hence, BJP had a challenge in hand but not an impossible task.”
In the whole region, the network of the RSS-affiliated organizations has also been activated to prepare a database of workers who can connect with each village and showcase the achievements of the present government. In the run-up to the polls, the saffron party had divided the state into six regions in view of its large size and population. The regions named are Awadh, Kanpur, Bundelkhand, Braj, Kashi, Gorakhpur, and western UP. Arjun Ram Meghwal has been given charge of Braj zone and Captain Abhimanyu will handle the western UP zone, Shobha Karandlaje has been given charge of Awadh, Annapurna Devi will handle Kanpur region and Vivek Thakur is the in-charge of Gorakhpur region.