Exactly four years since the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, the big political story of the state has not been Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, but the opposition, for its shocking inability to get its act together and resurrect itself even to a minimal measure.
It was on 11 February in 2017 that polling for the UP election began. And in the verdict on 11 March, it became clear that the opposition parties stood decimated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) registering a massive win, grabbing 312 of the state’s 403 assembly seats.
Four years since, and with a year to go for the next assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, all the opposition parties — Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP), Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s Congress, and even Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) — have remained exactly where they were, unable to take even one step forward. They look directionless, uninspiring and lacking in imagination, despite getting four years to recover from the setback.
Yogi Adityanath, with his shaky governance record, gave his rivals enough chances to corner him and his government, and use that to rebuild themselves. His opponents, however, chose to dodge all opportunities and drift away into deeper political wilderness. This, despite the fact that players like Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati head deeply entrenched regional parties with a strong cadre presence and have had multiple stints in power.
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The Yogi years
Yogi Adityanath was a surprise pick as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. There is little denying that the BJP’s 2017 win was entirely a mandate for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and it was up to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP high-command to pick a CM. With such a resounding mandate, Adityanath had a clean slate to fill with what could have been a stellar governance record — something the BJP under Narendra Modi claims to stand for.
The UP CM, however, was (and perhaps still shows signs of being) a novice in matters of administration and governance. What he ended up unleashing was a rule of intolerance, high-handedness and poor law enforcement. Adityanath’s first few years as CM, in fact, were particularly questionable, with no significant achievement to boast of.
In BJP’s playbook, Adityanath’s biggest achievement, perhaps, has been bringing in the anti-conversion law, which helps further the Right-wing ecosystem’s cause of keeping in check what they refer to as ‘love jihad‘. The anti-cow slaughter law is yet another example of the UP CM’s ‘achievement’. These, in fact, as ThePrint’s political editor D.K. Singh rightly argued, make Yogi a role model for other BJP CMs.
With his saffron rob and aggressively divisive language, Yogi Adityanath is possibly the BJP’s dream CM, but with one key ingredient missing — vikas.
In the larger sense, there is little Yogi Adityanath has to show for himself. He has no big ticket infrastructure project or tangible creation to his credit so far, unlike both his predecessors Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav, who built expressways and massive parks. The sky-touching Ram temple in Ayodhya, of course, will be the BJP’s big legacy, but perhaps more as a plus point for Narendra Modi-Amit Shah than Adityanath.
The BJP government in UP has also been under the scanner for its unimpressive law enforcement track record, particularly in the area of women’s safety. As a politician, Adityanath’s record has been chequered too. He may have emerged as a star campaigner for his party across states but barely manages to strike a connection that can translate into electoral benefits outside of UP. All in all, Yogi Adityanath hasn’t been the toughest opponent, and yet, the opposition in UP has looked overwhelmed, underprepared and lost at each juncture.
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The big disappointment — the opposition
The big political story in Uttar Pradesh from 2017 onward hasn’t been the success or failure of Yogi Adityanath, or the debate surrounding his rule. It is the complete ineptness of Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav and the Gandhis to put up even a semblance of a fight or show any effort to revive their declining electoral fortunes.
A ruling CM, a former CM, the then president of the Congress party and a prominent Jat leader — all failed miserably in front of Modi’s popularity and Amit Shah’s election management. Since then, however, they have all slipped further into oblivion. Forging alliances and breaking them off (Congress-SP, SP-BSP), speaking up on issues that are low hanging fruits, politically, like the Hathras gangrape and murder, but remaining silent on tricky subjects like the Babri Masjid judgment. Making their presence felt erratically and underwhelmingly, the opposition leaders in UP have betrayed their lack of direction and grit and seem to have already given up trying to secure first place in the race.
Akhilesh Yadav has been silent and off the radar, Mayawati has seemed more baffled than in-control, and Rahul along with sister Priyanka, whose formal entry into politics as the Congress in-charge of eastern UP was seen as a game-changer, have remained as ineffective as ever. Ajit Singh, meanwhile, seems to have been missing in action, even in the ongoing farmers’ protests, except for a statement here and there.
There have been rays of hope for the opposition, like Yogi Adityanath’s crucial bypoll losses. But these seem more like passing phases than any substantive and enduring interventions.
Yogi Adityanath may be the most visible and newsy political narrative from Uttar Pradesh since 2017, but it is the opposition and its inability that has been the real story. The 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls will be as much a referendum on Mayawati-Akhilesh-Rahul-Priyanka as on the chief minister. UP’s political players have one year and a lot of hard work left to redeem themselves.
Views are personal.