 "Power, road projects to weave BJP's UP poll narrative")
The campaign has involved weaving the customary caste alliances and raking up the Samajwadi Party (SP) government’s alleged protection to ‘anti-social’ Muslim and Yadav elements.
That said, a pillar of the BJP’s messaging will be on reaching out to youth, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise of ushering in development of the state.
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“We have prepared a campaign that will reach the remotest of villages, to highlight the unprecedented work the Modi government has done for UP in two years,” said Arun Singh, a national general secretary of the party. The campaign will hail UP as the ‘land of opportunities’, with a young workforce and the potential of its agri economy.
The focus will be infrastructure development — rural electrification, construction of national highways, rail freight corridors, funds and schemes for micro, small and medium enterprises in the state. It will seek to counter the ruling SP’s claim that the Modi government, despite the BJP and its Apna Dal ally winning 73 of UP’s 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2014, didn’t do anything for the state.
The Akhilesh Yadav government is showcasing the metro rail in Lucknow, the capital, as a symbol of development. “For a state like UP, a metro rail in its capital is insufficient as an example of development. Issues like power reforms, road connectivity and employment generation makes sense among the masses,” said an official.
According to the campaign material, the Modi government completed 865 km of national highways in the past two years, at a cost of Rs 6,200 crore. Close to 30 road and highway projects worth Rs 18,000 crore would be awarded this year.
The Union power ministry says, of the 1,529 hitherto non-electrified villages in the state, 1,356 have been electrified – one of the highest in the country. Among other power schemes, the Central government has allocated the highest amount of funds, Rs 6,947 crore, under the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gramin Jyoti Yojana, to UP and Rs 4,721 crore under the Integrated Power Development Scheme, said senior officials.
There is an interesting story to the insistence on reaching power supply to the villages. The Modi campaign of 2014 Lok Sabha had relied heavily on television and social media. However, Amit Shah, now the national chief and then the party in-charge for UP, and his lieutenant, Sunil Bansal, soon realised such a campaign had limitations, as UP had the highest number of un-electrified villages. Power supply to those nominally electrified was also poor.
The BJP then took recourse to traditional methods of campaigning, by putting up posters that had Modi’s face and the BJP’s election symbol, the lotus. Party and Sangh Parivar workers would carry out torchlight processions at night, raising slogans in support of Modi’s promise of development.
Electrified villages would help reach its social media and television campaign.
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‘Make them aware’
Union power ministry officials said the focus is awareness. Piyush Goyal, minister for coal, power and renewable energy, recently met all the party MPs of UP to “educate them about power reforms and rural electrification. He also sought their support for lighting up villages and curb energy theft”, said a senior officer.
“There are no big bucks involved in the rural electrification drive in UP. It is just awareness, data collection and dissemination. We are planning to educate the villagers through SMS, billboards, video messages. This would help their right to ask for power supply from local authorities with transparency. Distribution companies are also being involved, so that this demand can be met,” said an official. UP was one of the early states to join UDAY scheme to reform power distribution utilities.
The recently approved textile policy and revival of fertiliser units are in line with the BJP’s plan to push its case on development and job generation in the state. Textile hubs in Farrukhabad, Kanpur and Bareilly, along with the handlooms centre in Varanasi, the PM’s constituency, would receive special incentives. The Centre government has already announced textile parks in these cities, and a revival package and trade facilitation centres for handlooms in Varanasi.
Three government-owned companies — NTPC, Coal India and Indian Oil — have joined hands to pump equity in three languishing fertiliser units, one being in UP (Gorakhpur). The government has also announced schemes for sugarcane farmers and launched sesame crop cultivation in Bundelkhand, as also a fodder bank in that region. There is a significant increase in the Centre’s contribution to the state disaster response fund as well.
Road ahead
The BJP’s state executive meeting is scheduled at Moradabad on July 15-16, to take stock of the campaign. Shah and others have also been reaching out to sections of Dalits and backward classes. The party president has been visiting Dalit homes. Shah has also held six meetings with booth-level workers, across the six regions of UP. Each of these was attended by 15,000 booth workers.
One challenge the party faces is not having a credible face to rival either current CM Akhilesh Yadav or the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Mayawati. Its recently appointed state chief, Keshav Prasad Maurya, hasn’t enthused workers. Home Minister Rajnath Singh is unwilling to be the face of the campaign and Varun Gandhi is unacceptable to the leadership.
“The challenge we faced in Bihar has come to haunt us in UP as well. We need to keep the morale of our cadre up until the voting day for them to get voters to the polling booths and in that, the role of a chief ministerial face will be crucial,” said a state leader, who didn’t want to be named. It remains to be seen who that face would be.