On Saturday, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath will finish his election campaign with a rally in Azamgarh’s Atraulia, a seat that the Bharatiya Janata Party has never won. By doing five public meetings on the last day of canvassing, CM Yogi will complete nearly 200 rallies and roadshows in this election campaign.
“Yogi has visited nearly every assembly constituency in this election — some were visited by the chief minister this year before the model code of conduct had kicked in for the polls. It is one of the most expansive campaigns by any CM and a special focus of the party has been on seats that it has never won or had lost narrowly in the last elections,” a senior functionary close to the chief minister told News18.
The CM did nearly 3-4 rallies and roadshows daily since the last week of January after the candidates in constituencies were finalised. The campaign was marked by his “80-20” comment starting from western UP, attacks on Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and mention of the “bulldozer campaign” against the mafia. Towards the end of the electioneering in eastern UP, bulldozers were even parked at Yogi’s rally venues to reinforce the message.
The chief minister throughout the campaign exuded confidence that his party will again cross 300 seats while some other party leaders privately said that the BJP will form the next government albeit with probably a lower seat tally, between 230 to 250. The National Democratic Alliance had won 325 of the total 403 seats in the 2017 elections and multiple BJP leaders say the number is bound to come down. “Par aayenge toh Yogi hi (but Yogi will return to power),” is a refrain from most leaders.
One senior BJP leader told News18 that the number of seats does not matter anymore and a win will be a win. “One must remember that none of the strong UP CMs in the last three decades — be it Kalyan Singh, Rajnath Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, or even Akhilesh Yadav — have been able to bring back their government. If Yogi Adityanath is able to do the same, and he will, it will be a big feat,” he argued.
Defence minister Rajnath Singh had pointed towards this in a rally this week, saying no government has been able to get a second consecutive term in UP in the last 30-40 years but the BJP is set to do this. Bharatiya Janata Party leaders say the “cyclical nature” of UP politics does not hold water anymore as the narrative has changed since 2014 under Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister and a new “beneficiary” class of voters emerging in Uttar Pradesh.
March 10 will determine if this holds true and Yogi Adityanath emerges as arguably the strongest chief minister of an Indian state, cementing his place in the top BJP troika at the national level, or if Akhilesh Yadav makes a comeback.
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