Amit Shah’s appointment as the BJP’s in-charge in Uttar Pradesh, shows that the party is finally giving the politically-crucial State the importance it deserves. It also matches well with the party’s look North plan
There are many ways to analyse the appointment of former Gujarat Home Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Amit Shah as the party’s prabhari (in-charge) of Uttar Pradesh. But all of them will point to one holistic view: The party has decided to ‘look North’ in the run-up to the lok Sabha election. This is the first time in recent years that the BJP has given Uttar Pradesh the attention it deserves, because until now it appeared to have given the State up for good. During the last Assembly election, the party had half-heartedly roped in Ms Uma Bharti to lead the campaign, and she reciprocated as half-heartedly with her performance.
The look North approach, though it isn’t a formalised name, has Uttar Pradesh as its pivot. With 80 lok Sabha seats at stake, the BJP realises that it cannot hope to touch the 175 plus mark nation-wide without doing well in this State. Party president Rajnath Singh is not oblivious of this fact, which is why he has brought in a heavy-weight to supervise the crucial State. Mr Singh has seen the rise of the BJP on the strength of its performance in the State, and he has also seen the decline of the party after it lost ground in Uttar Pradesh to the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. He has been part of the process in both the cases.
The maxim that the party which controls Uttar Pradesh controls the Centre, has nearly always proved true, even in times of deeply fragmented poll results. Even today, the SP, which rules lucknow, has propped up the Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre. The day it decides to withdraw support, the regime is likely to fall.
Mr Shah comes to the job with some credentials. As a key confidant of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, he is known for organisational acumen. Besides, he is a leader in his own right and a crowd-puller too. The controversies that surround him have made him into a larger-than-life character, which will help him galvanise the State cadre of the BJP into a fighting force. He has a tough task at hand. Being out of power for several years in a row in Uttar Pradesh has been bad enough for the party, but being virtually marginalised too has hit the morale of the party cadre hard. Mr Shah will need the backing of not just the party’s central leadership but also the unconditional support of State leaders to turn things around.
That Mr Rajnath Singh is very serious about Uttar Pradesh is also borne from the important role that is being reportedly chalked out for Mr Varun Gandhi. By giving him the charge of West Bengal, where the party’s prospects are not too bright, Mr Singh has provided Mr Gandhi enough time to concentrate on Uttar Pradesh. It is possible that Mr Gandhi could contest from Sultanpur, a constituency his father Sanjay Gandhi once represented, and also play a major role in the party’s campaign across the State. He is one of the BJP’s most promising younger leaders and has the capacity to draw crowds and pull votes. This is a good opportunity for him to come out of his mother and Member of Parliament Maneka Gandhi’s shadow. But it remains to be seen how well he gels with Mr Shah, given that he is not seen, as yet at least, as a huge supporter of the Gujarat Chief Minister to whom Mr Shah owes allegiance.
One other reason why the look North strategy has Uttar Pradesh in focus is because the party has more or less peaked in other northern States like Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where it is in power, as also to a lesser extent in Bihar where it is in alliance with the Janata Dal (United). While the scope to better its performance in these States is always there, the magnitude is nothing compared to what Uttar Pradesh offers. A recent opinion poll conducted by a television news channel in collaboration with professional pollsters has given the BJP 22 seats in the State if elections were held now. That’s good news for a party which has ceded ground over the decade to regional outfits. As months roll by and we near the election, it is possible that this figure will improve, especially with Mr Shah at the helm in the State.
There is a counter-argument that Mr Shah’s appointment will end up harming the BJP, because he is a divisive figure. His presence could lead to a polarisation of the votes of the minority community in favour of the Congress. If we accept this premise, then we must also accept the fact that polarisation is not a one-way phenomenon. If the minority votes segregate into one corner, so will the majority votes in an opposite corner. The beneficiary of a counter-polarisation will be the BJP, especially when Mr Modi carpet-bombs the State through his election rallies. Moreover, it is naïve to believe that the minority votes, if they are polarised in Uttar Pradesh, will all go to the Congress in the lok Sabha election. The votes in all likelihood are going to be divided among the SP, the BSP and the Congress. While the margin of distribution may vary from constituency to constituency, it is all but certain that in the presence of a resurgent BSP and an entrenched SP, the Congress will not sweep the minority votes in the State.
But, important as Uttar Pradesh is to the BJP’s scheme of things, the look North strategy will truly succeed if the party retains Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in the Assembly election and wrests Rajasthan and Delhi from the Congress. From all available indications, this is not just theoretically possible but is also waiting to happen. Once the Congress loses Rajasthan and Delhi, it will have to battle that much harder to retain its hold in the lok Sabha poll from these States. In fact, if these two States slip out of the Congress’s grip, the party will be left with no major State to rule in the north, barring Jammu & Kashmir where the National Conference is the major partner in a coalition regime, and Haryana, where the party is not as secure as it believes itself to be. That weakness will reflect on the Congress in the lok Sabha election.
The BJP’s look North approach has also been necessitated by the party’s recent debacle in the Karnataka Assembly election. The party had once hoped that Karnataka would be its window to the south, and that the BJP would slowly but surely make electoral gains in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. But that dream is on hold. The BJP has to now re-build the party from scratch in Karnataka before it can think of a southern triumph. The best that the party can hope for from the south is gain regional parties as allies, but these parties will show interest only if the BJP comes within striking distance of forming a Government at the Centre. That, in turn, depends on the party’s performance in the north.