With former BSP MP Jagdish Rana on Monday joining the BJP, the party has geared up for the major electoral battle in Uttar Pradesh which would be in sharp focus of its programmes celebrating two years of the Modi Government’s ‘development’ agenda and ‘achievements’.

Almost all senior party leaders and top Cabinet Ministers are to visit UP for over a fortnight, beginning May 26, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to kickstart party’s programmes, events, intellectuals’ meet and rallies by addressing a public meeting at Saharanpur. Incidentally, Rana, who had stint with the SP too, is a former MP from Saharanpur.

BJP president Amit Shah will also visit Saharanpur and  stay put in the State for a longer time as senior leaders, including Cabinet Ministers and other party leaders, who are part of 32 teams formed to communicate Government’s “achievements” to the public in about a fortnight, would also  be addressing public meetings  and various other political conclaves in different part of the State.

In Keshav Prasad Maurya (an MP from Phulpur), the BJP has a new State president from a non-Yadav OBC caste (Maurya, also known as Sakhya, Bind and Saini in different parts of UP) who may fit in the fresh social engineering of the party strategists.

But as yet the BJP has not decided on its chief ministerial candidate unlike it did in Assam in Sarbananda Sonowal where BJP went on to score a thumping victory last week.

“The party will have to declare its CM candidate at the earliest to provide traction in the campaign and develop local connect. Otherwise situation may not be different that Bihar”, said a party MP from West UP.

Various names doing the round for long for the CM face, include Union Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister Mahesh Sharma, (MP from Noida, a Brahmin), and Yogi Adityanath (MP from Gorakhpur, a Thakur) as also Smriti Irani, HRD Minister, who gave a tough fight to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in the lok Sabha polls from Amethi.  The party has not made up its mind on the issue with senior leaders skirting the query saying “BJP’s Parliamentary Board will take a decision”.

Slated to face Assembly polls in early next year, the State with 72 BJP MPs, is most crucial for the party’s politics of dominance at the Centre. By the time BJP National executive meets at Allahabad from June 12 to June 13, a spate of decisions in context of UP is expected to be taken by the top party leadership, which literally means Modi and Shah.