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HomeOpinionPolitically CorrectWhy Yogi Adityanath ignores Akhilesh, Mayawati, Priyanka but welcomes Owaisi to UP

Why Yogi Adityanath ignores Akhilesh, Mayawati, Priyanka but welcomes Owaisi to UP

The Uttar Pradesh chief minister is now an Owaisi ‘fan’. And calls the AIMIM head a ‘big national leader’.

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Who do you think Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath considers his enemy no. 1? Try googling a combination of keywords such as ‘Yogi’, ‘Akhilesh’, and ‘Mayawati’. There are lots about these opposition leaders attacking him. But nothing in terms of response from Yogi Adityanath! He had nothing to say about the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief, Mayawati. Although he did speak about “bahurupiya brand” of socialists and “dynastic socialism” 

a few months back, he didn’t utter Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s name. Maybe the search engine needed better keywords. But the fact is the UP CM has largely refrained from engaging his two predecessors in any verbal duel.

In an interaction with The Indian Express journalists last week, when he was asked who he considered his biggest adversary in the next year’s assembly polls, Yogi was almost philosophical: “I don’t consider anyone an antagonist. Both sides (the government and the opposition) are the essence of a democracy….”

Maybe naming an adversary is ‘un-Yogic’. He would rather let the world know about his challenger by showering him with praise. “(Asaduddin) Owaisiji is a big national leader. He goes to different parts of the country for campaigning and he has his own janadhaar (support base among people). If he has challenged the BJP, then BJP workers will accept his challenge,” the UP CM said Saturday.

It came in response to Owaisi’s remark that Yogi wouldn’t be allowed to become the CM after the 2022 polls.

So, why would Yogi Adityanath see a ‘national leader’ with ‘janadhaar’ in someone whose party, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), secured 2.46 per cent of the votes on 38 seats that it contested in 2017? Remember 37 of these 38 AIMIM candidates had lost deposits.


Also read: Mayawati is sparing no one, not former ally SP or BJP. Come 2022, she wants BSP as ‘the’ choice


Reason for Owaisi’s pique with ‘secular’ parties

Before we come to discuss Yogi Adityanath’s new-found admiration for the AIMIM chief, let’s look at Owaisi’s background and why and how he has become an eyesore for the so-called secular camp as a ‘vote-katua’ (vote-cutter), or someone who eats into their Muslim votes.

It was in November 2012 when Owaisi walked out of the UPA, accusing then Congress government in Andhra Pradesh of “no longer” being a secular government. Seven legislators of the AIMIM had been arrested in Hyderabad for opposing the expansion of a temple adjoining Charminar. He had made a name for himself by then as a fiery orator. When the Congress was discussing the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, he told UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi bluntly: “It’s good for my politics (in Telangana region) if you divide Andhra Pradesh. It will give a foothold to the BJP in Telangana. But you must know it will finish your party and is bad for the state.” Gandhi didn’t listen to this advice and went on to ensure the bifurcation a couple of years later, says a source privy to the deliberations then.

Even after severing ties with the Congress, Owaisi wasn’t totally averse to engaging with non-BJP parties even though he told his friends in private how he hated their politics of treating Muslims as a ‘mere vote bank’. Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Sonia Gandhi sent a senior party leader to talk with Owaisi. Not to be seen as hobnobbing with a Congressman, he rode a bike to come to the hotel, with his helmet on. He had to wait for over two hours for the Congress politician who was having dinner with his then girlfriend, as an Owaisi associate told me. Nothing came of the meeting later. Over a period of time, say his associates, Owaisi has come to be convinced that big secular parties just want to “use” popular Muslim leaders like him to further their vote bank politics while they pay lip service to the cause of Muslims in terms of helping them to realise their aspirations.

It has been a long haul since then. His former allies in the secular camp have projected him as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s B-team. An analysis of election results for six years since 2014, done by my colleague, Fatima Khan, in September last year showed there wasn’t any substance in the allegations that Owaisi played a decisive role in the BJP’s victories.


Also read: BJP will win more than 300 seats in upcoming UP assembly polls, says Yogi Adityanath


What makes Adityanath an Owaisi ‘fan’

Coming back to the question about why Yogi Adityanath suddenly finds Owaisi a ‘national leader’ with ‘janadhaar’ , the answer is obvious: The UP CM has decided to project Owaisi as his principal challenger/adversary, no matter what Mayawati, Akhilesh and others stand for.

The AIMIM is likely to contest 100 out of the 403 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh where Muslims constitute around 19 per cent of the population. They are estimated to hold a decisive sway in around 50 seats (where they make up for over 30 per cent of voters) while they have a significant presence in over 130 seats. But it’s not these numbers (of seats that Muslim voters can sway) that excite the BJP leadership. The latter is looking up to him to set a Hindu-Muslim electoral discourse.

Despite all claims of development in UP, the next assembly elections are likely to be centred on Covid-19 mismanagement, no matter the official statistics of low infections and fatality, healing touch to lakhs of migrant labourers and UP coming to no. 2 position on the ‘ease of doing business’ list from 16 in 2016. BJP MLAs and MPs have been going to town, questioning the government’s claims about efficient Covid management. Pictures of Covid victims’ bodies flowing in rivers and buried in the sand on the banks of the Ganges remain an abiding image that the opposition parties will keep playing up during the election campaign. Hindi poet Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’, who was from UP, had seen river Ganga “laden with swollen, abandoned dead bodies” during the Spanish flu. Nirala’s work may not be part of political discourse today, but it has gained contemporary relevance.

Yogi Adityanath would, therefore, love to engage Owaisi in high-octane debates on discrimination against Muslims in the state, especially in the context of alleged excesses against anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA protesters.


Also read: BJP has its post-second wave politics ready — from perception to expectation management


Why UP won’t be Bengal for AIMIM

Political parties that command the Muslim vote bank in Uttar Pradesh—mostly, Samajwadi Party—would make a mistake if they go by the AIMIM’s electoral record in the 2017 polls and in West Bengal early this year. In Bengal, Owaisi’s party failed to make its mark, losing deposits in all the seven seats it contested, with 0.93 per cent vote share on those seats. It was because Mamata Banerjee had retained her hold over the Muslim vote bank and successfully projected herself as the only bulwark against the BJP. Besides, the AIMIM hadn’t done any ground work and was abandoned by its prospective ally, the Indian Secular Front (ISF) of Abbas Siddiqui, at the eleventh hour.

In UP, however, ‘secular’ parties such as the SP, BSP and Congress should worry about the AIMIM’s performance in 2020 Bihar elections in which it won five of the 20 seats it contested, with 14.28 per cent vote share on those seats. The AIMIM had drawn a blank in the 2015 elections in Bihar, failing to win any of the six seats it contested. But the party had kept working in the state, finally making an impact five years later. These parties can make the AIMIM’s performance in UP in 2017 a yardstick at their own peril.

Akhilesh Yadav might have organised cycle rallies against the CAA and Congress’ Priyanka Vadra might have visited anti-CAA protesters, but such support was sporadic, at best. Both the SP and the Congress have been assiduously trying to project themselves as pro-Hindu parties, with Akhilesh Yadav even claiming that Lord Ram belongs to the Samajwadi Party and “we are Ram bhakts and Krishna bhakts.” In the run up to the polls, these parties are likely to buttress their pro-Hindu credentials as the foundation work of the Ayodhya Ram temple is likely to be completed by the end of 2021, giving the BJP a big leg-up. And, lest Akhilesh and Priyanka should forget, the Centre may come out with citizenship law rules any time in the next six-seven months, re-igniting the pro and anti-CAA debate. Owaisi is sure to wade into all these fractious debates with gusto while the ‘secular’ parties would struggle to find a middle ground.

No wonder, Yogi Adityanath seems so keen on welcoming Asaduddin Owaisi to UP.

The author tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.

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