After a number of setbacks and the loss of the majority in 2024’s parliamentary polls, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is descending further into an abyss. The party is losing the provincial bypolls, and struggling to contain intra-party feuds.
The popularity of PM Modi is also reportedly plummeting, and he is absent for the first time from the media space since his ascension as PM in 2014.
The drubbing at the polls has damaged the morale of the cadre and reports of dissent in party units all across the country are emerging. In Uttar Pradesh, the largest state of India and considered most crucial politically, the fight in the BJP’s higher echelons is out in the open.
UP is governed by the hardline Hindutva leader Yogi Adityanath who dons saffron robes and doubles as a chief priest in a popular temple in the eastern city of Gorakhpur. He is said to be stubborn and a casteist leader. His Rajput caste has traditionally been in conflict with Brahmins, the highest in the caste hierarchy, and other backward castes which are clubbed as OBCs. OBCs have been the bedrock of BJP’s support base and both PM Modi and his close lieutenant and home minister Amit Shah are OBCs.
In order to assuage the OBC resentment, the party reportedly mulled to replace CM Yogi with his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya, who is the party’s most prominent OBC face in UP.
Modi and Shah are believed to be promoters of OBCs, and thus they and Yogi have been at variance on a scores of issues concerning the issuing of tickets to candidates. In 2024 parliamentary polls, BJP had fielded around 20 Rajput candidates, ostensibly due to insistence from Yogi and the Rajput lobby in the state. The majority of them lost, bringing the party tally from 62 in 2019 to 33 in 2024.
Party insiders have blamed poor poll performance squarely on Yogi’s election management and his policies that have antagonized OBC and other lower castes.
Last week, the BJP lost 10 out of 13 seats that went to voting in bypolls in states like West Bengal, Punjab, Uttarakhand, etc.
Like it lost the Ayodhya parliamentary seat despite erecting a grand Ram Temple, it lost the assembly constituency of Badrinath, which is another famous Hindu pilgrimage city. Since the OBC factor weighed heavily in these polls, the BJP high command was further alarmed.
It is in fact a Catch-22 situation for BJP. If it sticks with Yogi who will rule in his quintessential heavy-handed style, flaunting both his Rajput caste and priesthood, it will veer away from other castes from the BJP. If the party sacks him, he will raise the flag of revolt.
In order to assuage the OBC resentment, the party reportedly mulled to replace CM Yogi with his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya, who is the party’s most prominent OBC face in UP. Maurya, unlike Yogi, also comes from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh background and is seen as the leader from the cadre. As soon as the news broke out, Yogi’s camp started shepherding their supportive legislators and is the style of Yogi, he ‘communicated a threat’ to the party leadership that if he is removed, it would be consequential to the party.
Till the writing of this piece, debaters in the media are speculating whether the storm in BJP will turn into a tornado, splitting the party into two in UP, or will it be nipped in the bud?
It is in fact a Catch-22 situation for BJP. If it sticks with Yogi who will rule in his quintessential heavy-handed style, flaunting both his Rajput caste and priesthood, it will veer away from other castes from the BJP. If the party sacks him, he will raise the flag of revolt.
The call for Yogi’s head caught wind after an internal report by the UP BJP president Bhupendra Chadhary was submitted to the party seniors in New Delhi this week. The report, according to some insiders, has pointed towards not only mismanaged polls but it also highlighted “governance loopholes” from Yogi’s part that caused the party to sink.
The report also highlights the “tug of war” between the party and UP government.
BJP, it is being speculated in the media circles, will do some surgery to placate dissenting groups. But this surgery will depend on how the party fares in upcoming bypolls in the state for 10 assembly seats. If BJP loses majority of them, a major reshuffle will become inevitable and that may either work or backfire.
The BJP leadership is especially perturbed as four states will go to polls from September onwards. They are Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. In all these states, the BJP is the weakest. The party is therefore trying to weed out the weaker links from its organization. The loss in these states will sound a bugle for the Modi government’s premature demise and a mid-term poll.