Bharatiya Janata Party’s list of star campaigners for Karnataka election comprised a host of prominent names from outside the state—Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seven of his Union cabinet colleagues, party president JP Nadda and three chief ministers, among others. On the campaign trail, reporters were naturally curious to check out how these star campaigners were swinging public opinion ahead of 10 May election.
En route Mysuru last week, I stopped by in Mandya, a Janata Dal (Secular) stronghold, to interact with a group of about a dozen people gathered at a market place. PM Modi, Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah, Minister of Defence Rajnath Singh, Nadda and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath have addressed public meetings and held roadshows in Mandya over the last four-five months.
I started with a question about PM Modi: “What was his message to you, double-engine sarkar?” It triggered an animated discussion. It was not quite a BJP-friendly crowd as they started complaining about price rise, unemployment and governance deficit in their state. “But Modi government will get support in 2024 (Lok Sabha election). Who else is there?” said a man in his 60s. Many nodded in agreement. They went quiet and looked blankly when I started asking about other central BJP leaders who visited Mandya. “What about Yogi Adityanath?” I asked, to break the silence. It drew immediate reactions—“Bulldozer Baba!” “Encounter Baba!” They didn’t have much to say about his message but he had obviously struck a chord.
There were similar responses as one travelled in other parts of southern Karnataka. After PM Modi, the UP CM was arguably the only leader from outside Karnataka whose name seemed to have a ring of familiarity to it in the state’s hinterland. News of bulldozers and police encounters in UP obviously travelled far and wide. Adityanath has another strong bond with Karnataka. His Gorakhnath Mutt and many influential sects in the southern state, including Adichunchanagiri Mutt in Mandya and Jogi Mutt in Mangaluru, follow Nath Panth tradition.
Given Adityanath’s influence in Karnataka, it was a surprise to see his limited campaign in the state. He addressed just 10 meetings stretched over three different days. “No need to see any conspiracy here. He (UP CM) was much in demand and we wanted him to spend at least a week in Karnataka. But he wanted to focus on civic bodies’ election in UP,” a Karnataka BJP functionary told this reporter.
Elections in 760 urban local bodies of UP—17 municipal corporations, 199 municipal councils and 544 nagar panchayats—are ongoing slated and the chief minister wanted to focus on that. Adityanath has visited 40 districts of UP in the past fortnight, campaigning for the party.
Also read: BJP govt focused on development, not appeasement: Yogi Adityanath
Coming out of the shadows
These civic body polls are like a mini-assembly election, involving 4.3 crore voters (as against 15 crores in the last assembly election). They will elect 17 mayors, 1,420 corporators to municipal corporations and around 12,500 members of the municipal councils and panchayats.
There are three reasons for the way Adityanath has been focusing so much on urban local body polls when his party colleagues are scrambling to campaign extensively in Karnataka and prove their mass appeal.
First, he has always been in the shadow of a popular prime minister. It’s his time to emerge out of that and show that he can win elections in UP for the BJP on his own. In 2017, when the BJP won UP assembly polls, the credit went to PM Modi and justifiably so. When the party won again in 2022, the credit was shared between PM Modi—due to his popularity and BJP’s welfare schemes, including free food grains during Covid-19—and CM Adityanath. When the BJP had won 14 out of 16 mayoral seats in December 2017, about eight months after Adityanath became CM, then party president Shah said that it was another example of people’s “unshakable faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision and the BJP’s politics of performance.” It showed that the people had embraced economic reforms, said Shah in an apparent reference to the goods and services tax (GST).
Adityanath had then attributed the victory to Modi’s development policies and “Amit Shah’s guidance”.
But 2023 urban local bodies polls are all about him and his governance. His record in making UP safe—his mafia-ko-mitti-mein-mila-denge remark being the underlying theme—is the central plank in the local bodies polls. It comes right after the killings of gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed, his brother and son. Another dreaded gangster Anil Dujana was killed in a police encounter in Meerut last week.
“World is managed by the law of karma…ye prakriti sabka hisaab baraabar kar deti hai (People pay for their actions),” The Indian Express quoted Yogi Adityanath from a rally in Prayagraj last Tuesday, where Atiq once ran his fiefdom.
The Yogi Adityanath government has been criticised by civil rights activists and political adversaries for the killing of the gangster-turned-politician and his brother in police custody. Central BJP leaders have remained quiet, leaving the state’s CM to fend for himself. Urban civic body polls are an opportunity for Adityanath to showcase the popularity of his tough measures on the law and order front. That’s the second reason for him to concentrate on these polls on the home turf, sparing just three days for campaigning in Karnataka.
The third reason is Adityanath’s attempt to break the back of an already demoralised opposition ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Former UP CM Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) is seeking to expand its base through social engineering in local polls. The party hasn’t fielded any Yadav candidate in the mayoral polls, choosing to give party tickets to Brahmins, non-Yadav OBCs, Muslims and upper castes.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) whose electoral fortune has been on a continuous downslide is seeking to woo the Muslims, fielding 11 mayoral candidates from the minority community. It had won two of the 16 mayoral seats but this year, Mayawati’s party is looking to consolidate and expand her support base at the cost of the SP.
The BJP may not mind it, of course.
When results of Karnataka assembly elections come out on 13 May with that of UP urban local bodies polls, Yogi Adityanath would be hoping to silence his detractors from within and outside his party.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)