Headlines
After Delhi rout, alarm bells ring for BJP in UP
Lucknow, Feb 13
After a near washout in the
Delhi election, alarm bells are ringing in the BJP unit in Uttar Pradesh
which has aborted for now plans to rope in leaders from other parties.
Realizing
that the Delhi rout could be a result of overlooking loyalists and
long-time veterans, the state unit has decided to halt its overzealous
drive to rope in leaders from other parties. The Bharatiya Janata Party
has recruited over the past one month alone more than a dozen big and
small leaders as well as spouses from other parties.
The state
unit is also awaiting instructions from the central leadership on the
controversial 'ghar wapasi' (homecoming) programme that sought to make
Muslims to embrace Hinduism.
Laxmikant Bajpayi, the BJP state
president, has admitted the unease among party cadres and has vowed not
to bring in leaders from other parties at the cost of its own activists,
informed sources told IANS.
Bajpayi is learnt to have ordered his colleagues to stop all new proposed admissions to the party.
Old-timers
say that in a bid to embrace technology and tools like social
networking, largely to look like a party of youth and with a 21st
century outlook, the party had rubbed its old-time cadres the wrong way.
"The
party needs to understand that there has to be a balance between
technology and reality," said a senior BJP leader from Kanpur.
"You
can make members through SMS but not establish connect or dialogue with
people through SMS. The party needs to take stock of the situation," he
added.
State BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak admits to the
need for course correction post Delhi and said the party would do an
internal assessment of the election results in the capital and take
corrective measures.
"We will do whatever it takes to regain the
confidence of the people," one party leader told IANS after voters in
Delhi delivered a humiliating blow to the BJP, giving it just three of
the 70 assembly seats.
What, however, is more worrying is that in
a state where the "Modi Wave" wiped out all other parties just nine
months back, it is now faced with electoral reverses.
In all the electoral contests after the Lok Sabha polls in May 2014, the BJP has taken a hit in Uttar Pradesh.
It lost the by-elections, the Cantonment Board polls and the Rajya Sabha polls too.
The
Delhi outcome is considered a grave disaster since the national capital
is home to some three million people from eastern Uttar Pradesh known
as Poorvanchalis.
Constituting about 28 percent of the electorate
in Delhi, the Poorvanchal voters deserted the BJP en masse and voted
for the Aam Aadmi Party, which ended up with a staggering 67 of the 70
assembly seats.
This despite the fact that Bhojpuri actor and singer Manoj Tiwari is a BJP MP from Delhi.
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi is also an MP from eastern Uttar Pradesh, a
region the BJP swept barring Azamgarh, which elected Samajwadi Party
chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.
A senior BJP MP, not wishing to be
named, told IANS that the process of consultation with cadres and state
leaders had almost been done away with in the Amit Shah-led BJP.
"In
such situations, leaders with no real grassroots have taken over
decision-making, leaving the loyalists high and dry," he said.
Even
a union minister from Uttar Pradesh admits of "immense shortcomings" in
ticket distribution, saying when state unit chiefs are denied ticket,
the party's morale was bound to take a hit.
With Chief Minister
Akhilesh Yadav, smarting from the Lok Sabha rout, again rooting for
development, the BJP cannot afford to be complacent vis-a-vis Uttar
Pradesh, which sent a record 71 BJP MPs to the Lok Sabha.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at [email protected]