Under fire on all fronts, 2019 polls a chance for Yogi Adityanath to prove himself

The Hindutva poster boy has lost his sheen following the BJP’s poll reverses in Hindi heartland states and his style of governance, reports Virendra Singh Rawat. 

Yogi Adityanath is not known for mincing his words. Long before he became chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in March 2017, he had acquired the image of an unapologetic and hardline Hindutva leader.

Yet, uncharacteristically, he preferred to measure his words while addressing the Police Week celebrations in Lucknow last month. While praising the UP police for “improving” law and order to an extent that the state emerged as a preferred investment destination, he astutely disapproved of discarding the “anti-Romeo squad” and foot patrolling by senior cops for instilling confidence among the common man.

With the Lok Sabha elections a few months away, the tough message for the cops had come against the backdrop of rising incidents of crime, including murders, rapes, kidnappings, and armed robberies, apart from crimes against women. The murder of a reputed mobile phone company executive by a police constable in Lucknow a few months ago and the recent gruesome killing of a sub-inspector by a rampaging mob in Bulandshahar following an alleged cow slaughter incident, present two stark, yet disturbing facets of UP police.

In 2018, the ruling BJP lost all the four bypolls, including those to parliamentary seats in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, to the combined opposition. Gorakhpur is the traditional pocket borough of Adityanath. The defeats came as a rude shock to the Bharatiya Janata Party since Adityanath was known to hold sway over a section of the majority vote, especially the youth, in several Purvanchal (eastern UP) districts adjoining Gorakhpur.

Whereas the perception of law and order deteriorating in recent months is gaining currency, other wings of governance aren’t presenting a rosy picture, either, under Adityanath, who was popularly reckoned a strong leader, capable of pulling the lethargic UP bureaucracy out of its sloth.

Even as policing cuts a sorry figure, the BJP government has failed to translate its industrial development vision into reality beyond hosting the UP Investors Summit and foundation-laying ceremonies graced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

On July 14, Modi had laid the foundation of the 341-km Purvanchal Expressway, estimated to cost Rs 23,000 crore. However, civil work on the mega project has not begun even as the government is clearing the decks for another Bundelkhand Expressway, proposed to cost Rs 14,000 crore.

Similarly, land acquisition for the flagship Bundelkhand Defence Corridor, projected to attract an investment of Rs 20,000 crore, has not taken off, although Modi announced the project after inaugurating the UP Investors Summit on February 21, 2018.

The state had received investment proposals of Rs 4.68 trillion at the summit. In July 2018, the foundation for industrial projects worth Rs 60,000 crore was laid by Modi. Later, the government had announced that projects of Rs 1 trillion would witness their ground-breaking ceremony before December. However, that did not happen.

At the same time, the Hindutva poster boy also lost sheen following the BJP’s poll reverses in Hindi heartland states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where Adityanath had addressed more than 75 rallies even at the expense of governance in UP, a charge the opposition routinely slapped on him.

The BJP strategy to deploy a firebrand leader like Adityanath to campaign in these polls, hoping to consolidate majority votes, misfired, thus putting a question mark on the bandwidth of the leader, who is often compared to Modi owing to his austere lifestyle and general outlook.

Senior Congress leader and former UP legislator Akhilesh Pratap Singh said the Adityanath government was operating like an “event management company”.

“There is no control of law and order, while corruption has increased manifold. The CM has absolutely no control of the bureaucracy either,” he said.

Accusations of graft and impropriety against personal secretaries of three senior ministers by a news channel which did a sting operation last month have put Adityanath, who has proclaimed zero tolerance towards corruption, in the dock.

Things have come to such a pretty pass that the BJP itself is criticising Adityanath’s style of functioning, although in hushed voices. The BJP’s allies in the state -- Apna Dal-Sonelal and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party -- are disenchanted with the government and accused the saffron party of ignoring its smaller partners.

However, the Lok Sabha poll and the proposed mega projects present Adityanath with another chance to prove his bandwidth both as a leader and head of government.