JOIN USThe Modi-Yogi stalemate in Uttar Pradesh
Political cognoscenti are busy speculating the possible outcome of the differences between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the saffron-clad Yogi Adityanath, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Although tensions between them have been playing out publicly, there may now be a stalemate.
A series of meetings held in Delhi and Lucknow regarding the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prospects in the UP legislative assembly elections due early next year fuelled speculation about Yogi’s future. The BJP is worried about retaining UP. The party’s hold in North India is tenuous. It is out of power in Punjab, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, and it relies on alliance partners in Bihar and Haryana. Madhya Pradesh did not give it a clear victory, and it formed a government only through defections. So it is imperative for the party to retain UP. A defeat in the state could signal a rout in the 2024 general election.
The BJP may have concluded that anti-incumbency in UP is associated with Yogi’s persona and that public anger could be mollified by changing the chief minister. But removing Yogi was never going to be easy. The party has no obvious leader in the state to replace him.
Moreover, experience with changing horses on poll-eve has not ensured a favourable outcome. The electoral fortunes of the BJP were not served when it removed Kalyan Singh as UP chief minister and replaced him first by a non-descript Ram Prakash Gupta and then by Rajnath Singh before the elections. Nor did it gain by replacing Sahib Singh Verma with Sushma Swaraj in Delhi, 52 days before the polls. Removing Yogi eight months before elections could, on the other hand, spur dissatisfaction and internal strife in the BJP state unit.
However, the high profile meetings over the UP polls have managed to destabilise Yogi psychologically. This is evident from his paeans of praise for the Prime Minister on TV within hours of the U-turn in the Centre’s vaccine acquisition policy.
There is no doubt that UP’s mismanagement of the pandemic has been glaring with an evident lack of planning for the second wave of infections. The huge number of riverbank burials are just one sad testimony to this. However, Yogi’s high-handed use of the police, a large number of ‘encounter’ deaths, seizure of property and community fines for public protest has also alienated people. So the BJP high command might well be thinking of a course correction at this late stage.
The BJP’s anti-Yogi moves may have been spurred on by its rout in the panchayat elections last month. It suffered defeat across the state but more tellingly in key religious towns of Ayodhya, Varanasi, Mathura, Prayagraj and Gorakhpur. These are signs of simmering anti-incumbency, which could singe the party nationally if public anger persists till early next year.
It would be a mistake to think that, as in Assam, the BJP could decide not to project Yogi as its chief ministerial candidate in 2022. Unlike the mild-mannered Sarbananda Sonowal, Yogi will not step aside obediently. If the party has not been able to remove BS Yediyurappa well past the 75 years use-by date set by Prime Minister Modi, Yogi is not going to be a walk-over. Like Yediyurappa in Karnataka, he is not a rootless leader.
Moreover, the RSS is happy with Yogi’s feral Hindutva. Whereas earlier, he used to run a parallel Hindutva militia – the Hindu Yuva Vahini – he has over time surrendered to the RSS. It is likely to support him to lead the UP elections.
Yogi’s problems are directly with the prime minister. The differences are neither political nor ideological. Nor is Yogi, contrary to speculation, vying for the PM’s position. The trouble surfaced with Prime Minister Modi sending his trusted civil servant, Arvind Kumar Sharma, to UP five months ago to ginger up the UP administration. Sharma resigned from the Civil Service while he still had a few years left and was overnight elected as a Member of the Legislative Council. The speculation was that Sharma would be made a minister, perhaps even a Deputy Chief Minister, with the charge of the Home and Personnel departments.
This would mean Yogi was giving up control over the appointment of Class-I officers. Surrendering the Home portfolio would mean handing over the entire police machinery through which Yogi has built his reputation for furthering Hindutva’s ideological goals. Yogi quite naturally was reluctant to prepare for his own political hanging.
He has, however, been able to force a stalemate. Sharma remains a mere MLC, and the prime minister has been unable to justify sending his protégé to UP. For the time being, clearly the PM has not been able to outmanoeuvre the UP CM.
(The writer is a journalist based in Delhi)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.