oppn parties Another UP Minister Quits, Deepening The Crisis For The BJP In The State

News Snippets

  • RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat calls for one temple, one well and one crematorium to do away with deep divisions in the hindu society
  • Staff unrest plagues craft beer manufacturer Bira as current and formaer employess allege delays in salary and other payments
  • Intel appoints India-origin Sachin Katti as CTO & AI chief
  • Sebi says there is no manufacturing activity reported from Gensol's EV plant in Pune
  • Shooting WC: Former world champion drops to last in 10m air rifle individual event as his rifle malfunctions
  • Shooting World Cup: Arjun Babuta misses gold by 0.1 pont, settles for silver in 10m air rifle while Radrankksh Patil and Arya Borse win silver in 10m air rifle mixed event
  • IPL: MI beat CSK as Rohit Sharma (76 no) and Suryakumar Yadav (68 no) make short work of PKBS bolwers. CSK, with 2 points from 8 matches, have reached a point of no return in this years' competition
  • IPL: RCB beat PKBS by 7 wickets as Virat Kohli (73 no) and D Padikkal (61) sizzle
  • After Bangladesh commented on the riots in bengal over the Waqf bill, the Indian government has asked it protect the minorities in its own country and stop commenting on India's internal affairs
  • PM Modi discussed collaboration in technical and innovation fields with Tesdla owner Elon Musk, who is visiting India before the imminent entry of his firm Starlink in the country
  • Murshidabad returning to normal after clashes over the Waqf bill, internet restored, curfew lifted
  • The murder of a 17-year-old boy sparked protests in Delhi's north-east area Seelampur
  • Allahabad HC stayed the demolition of a mosque in UP's Fatehpur after the district authorities order for razing it was challenged by the Masjid Waqf committee
  • Hyderabad Police pick up an alleged fraud accused from a hotel in Kolkata but Kolkata Police not kept in the loop. Relatives of the man file a missing complaint and FIR
  • An ICU technician was held in Gurugram's Medanta Hospital for sexually assaulting a patient
RSS chief Mohan Bhagawat calls for 'one temple, one well',as well as one crematorium, to end caste differences
oppn parties
Another UP Minister Quits, Deepening The Crisis For The BJP In The State

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2022-01-12 10:55:14

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

The BJP's diligently constructed house of upper caste and OBC votes in UP is breaking down. Dara Singh Chauhan, another minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet and an OBC leader, quit the BJP on Wednesday. S P Maurya and four others had quit on Tuesday. Do these leaders see the writing on the wall for the BJP and are deserting a sinking ship in time or are they being enticed by the Samajvadi Party (SP)? It seems that it is a combination of both as obviously being in government would have offered these leaders greater rewards. But they must be receiving negative feedback from their constituents and with the crowd swelling at each SP rally, think that the time has come for a change of colour.

It took all the wiles of Amit Shah to crisscross the state from 2014 onwards and bring together non-Yadav OBC leaders on the BJP platform. This resulted is a practically invincible vote bank and the BJP stream-rolled the opposition in 2017 state elections and then in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. So what went wrong? Why is the carefully crafted strategy disintegrating at this most important juncture, when elections in UP are so crucial to the party?

Did the party not get wind of the way these OBC leaders were thinking? Why, then, did it not move in to control the damage? With the flight of these leaders, other will be emboldened and more defections cannot be ruled out. The farmers in west UP are already angry. The Yadav's traditionally vote for the SP. The Muslims in UP do not vote for the BJP. Now if the non-Yadav OBC votes are also taken away, the BJP will be left with only the upper caste votes and that would not be enough for it to come back to power. It would be interesting to see the strategy BJP adopts to manage this huge crisis.