BJP's New Game Plan For Uttar Pradesh

The Party is banking on Modi's charisma and a split in the Dalit-Muslim vote to take Uttarpradesh this spring.

- Uday Mahurkar and Santosh Kumar

The crowd is enthusiastic and hangs on to every word he says. “When you press the button on election day, it will not be to defeat someone or make someone win. You will press the button to change the destiny of Uttar Pradesh after 15 years of corruption and bhai-bhatijavaad (nepotism),” Bharatiya Janata Party national president Amit Shah says to a packed election gathering at Rudauli near Faizabad town on February 18. Repeated endlessly through this campaign, it’s a familiar spiel centred around Prime Minister Narendra Modi—“a leader committed to governance” pitted against “a coalition of two corrupt clans”. The crowd cheers Shah. It’s clearly a friendly cohort.

Through his 20-minute address, the BJP president doesn’t ask for votes. He demands “a two-third majority in Uttar Pradesh”. And, out in Faizabad, he even introduces small doses of Hindutva, albeit couched in issues of law and order and development. Shah speaks of reviving the local dairy industry. And to do this, he promises that a BJP government will “shut down all mechanised slaughterhouses within 12 hours of coming to power”.

From distributing tickets to campaigning on the ground, leaders privately acknowledge that the party has employed a three-pronged strategy—religious polarisation in western UP; working caste equations in Purvanchal; and emphasising the contrast in development (with neighbouring Madhya Pradesh) in Bundelkhand.

The BJP hopes to gain significant electoral advantage from the open wooing of Muslim voters by the ruling Samajwadi Party as well as the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party.