The choice of Keshav Prasad Maurya to lead the BJP in Uttar Pradesh is a stark admission that the party is running out of ideas to recapture power in this politically important state which goes to polls early next year.
Two things are clear from the decision.
1. The BJP has fallen into the caste trap again despite burning its fingers with Mandal politics in last year’s Bihar assembly polls. Maurya is a Khushwaha, a lower backward caste that the BJP has been wooing both in UP and Bihar.
2. It’s back to basics. Development is out, aggressive Hindutva is in. Maurya’s VHP background, his cow protection crusades and his kar seva activism at the height of the Ram Mandir agitation are testimony to the direction in which the BJP is moving in UP.
UP’s BJP Unit Unprepared for Elections
Maurya represents the Mandal-Kamandal dual plank that was successfully crafted by former ideologue KN Govindacharya in 1991. The BJP won its first ever majority government in UP that year under the leadership of Kalyan Singh, an OBC from the Lodh-Rajput caste with strong Hindutva credentials.
That was 25 years ago. The feat has never been repeated, either in UP or in Bihar. So why then is the BJP falling back on an old formula?
The answer lies in the poor state of preparedness in the party’s UP unit. All its known leaders, like Rajnath Singh and Kalyan Singh, are in their sunset years. The party has failed to nurture the second rung to take their place. The organisation has no muscle strength left, which is why the party has been steadily slipping in every election. And UP’s complex caste calculus continues to confound and confuse the upper caste-dominated BJP and RSS which have never been comfortable with caste politics.
- The BJP in Uttar Pradesh is running out of ideas to recapture power in the state.
- The party has fallen into the caste trap again despite burning its fingers with Mandal politics in last year’s Bihar assembly polls.
- KP Maurya has what Siddharth Nath Singh lacks, a powerful mentor in VHP boss Ashok Singhal who lobbied hard for a ticket for him.
- Maurya has a somewhat ‘unsavoury past’ and ten criminal cases, including a murder charge against him.
It is interesting that in the do-or-die battle that lies ahead as UP braces for polls, neither the Modi-Shah duo nor the RSS is ready to take a risk and experiment with something new. Maurya is their ideal choice to lead the BJP in UP because he poses little threat to the status quo.
He is a lightweight and therefore unlikely to challenge established interests. Most importantly, he will function as Shah’s proxy in a state the BJP president considers his special patch after he helped Modi net 71 of its 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2014.
Maurya’s Powerful Mentors in the VHP
Consider his background.
Maurya was virtually unknown till he wrested the Lok Sabha ticket for the Phulpur seat from someone eminently more qualified to contest – Siddharth Nath Singh.
As national spokesperson, Singh was a familiar face. He is Lal Bahadur Shastri’s grandson and can claim Phulpur, carved out of his grandfather’s Allahabad constituency, as a family legacy. He had also been nurturing the constituency for many months before the Lok Sabha election.
Maurya, on the other hand, was a two-time loser. He had contested the 2002 and 2007 assembly elections and lost. But he had what Singh lacked – a powerful mentor in VHP boss Ashok Singhal who lobbied hard for a ticket for him. In the Modi wave that swept through UP in 2014 Maurya was a big winner, bagging the Phulpur seat for the BJP for the first time with a handsome victory margin.
When Singhal died last November, Maurya was a prominent pall bearer. He sat atop the cortege with an incense bowl in his hands for Singhal’s final journey from the RSS headquarters in Jhandewalan to the crematorium.
Tried and Tested: BJP’s Return to Caste Politics
It was no secret that the BJP and RSS were hunting for a suitable OBC face to head the BJP in UP in the run-up to next year’s election. Initially, it was a toss-up between a Kurmi and a Lodh-Rajput. Internal discussions ruled out a Kurmi face on the plea that the caste was well represented at various levels in the BJP including the Union Cabinet. Santosh Gangwar, a Kurmi, is the textiles minister.
While a powerful section in the party headed by Rajnath Singh, pushed hard for a Lodh-Rajput, the proposal was met with fierce resistance from the BJP’s best known Lodh faces – Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharati.
The compromise was Maurya. His Khushwaha caste was the icing on the cake. Khushwahas were BSP supporters till Mayawati sacked their most prominent leader, Babu Singh Khushwaha, from her ministry in 2011 after he was implicated in the murder of two medical officers in Lucknow. The BJP immediately snapped him up and inducted him into the party on the eve of the 2012 assembly election.
It dropped him like a hot potato after a furore. But the BJP’s determination to woo this community never abated. Even after its unhappy experience with Upendra Khushwaha in Bihar, who let the side down badly in the 2015 assembly polls, the BJP and RSS have been pursuing this caste. In UP, it accounts for a little less than 3 percent of the OBC groups but is considered an influential caste.
In July, Subramanian Swamy’s petition in the Supreme Court for the construction of a Ram temple at Ayodhya will be heard. He has put in a plea for daily hearings and the BJP is gearing up to use the opportunity to drum up the mandir issues again.
Maurya’s VHP background makes him ideally placed to lead the campaign. So what if he has a somewhat unsavoury past of 10 criminal cases including a murder charge? That’s par for the course in a battle that must be won at all cost.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist)
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