NEW DELHI: Sensing a fatigue for its development agenda and after having fallen back on the Hindutva hardline agenda in the ongoing Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, fortune appears to have taken a turn for better for the Gorakhpur MP and saffron poster boy Yogi Adityanath.
Having spent more than a year in the wilderness after making his displeasure public for being ignored in the Cabinet reshuffle in the Modi government, Adityanath appears to have made a strong comeback into BJP’s scheme of things as the man to bank on to swing votes with his polarisation skills.
Sources said that the PM’s personal intervention to pitch the Gorakhpur MP as the numero uno campaigner in UP imbued fresh energy in the BJP’s bid to wrest power in Lucknow after a gap of two decades. “Yogi lifted the morale of the BJP in the western UP, which went to polls in the first two phases for 140 Assembly seats. With over a dozen rallies in all parts of western UP, Yogi weaned back the naysayers to the saffron fold as per internal assessment of the party,” a senior BJP leader said.
A section of the BJP leaders claim that the Gorakhpur MP is back in the reckoning within the party and the whisper doing the rounds within the saffron outfit suggest that he could be a formidable contender for the post of the chief minister in the events of a win.
“The view within the BJP is that the political situations in UP are ripe for the revival of the hardline Hindutva agenda. The BJP will approach the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with strong thrust on the Hindutva agenda. The change in track by the BJP is for the obvious reason that the slowdown in the economy coupled with delayed results of the many schemes of the Modi government on the ground leave the party with no option but to take recourse to polarisation in the state where the Census has revealed demographic change,” added the BJP leader.
The BJP is heavily counting on Adityanath to win the popular support for the BJP in the Poorvanchal region of the state where the Gorakhpur Mutt apparently enjoys considerable support base. “The BJP chief Amit Shah is also keen to bank on Yogi for being a Thakur, who could potentially match the stature of the Union Minister for Home Affairs Rajnath Singh in the state. Yogi’s change in fortune also appears on account for Modi’s apparent tilt to bachelors within the party for key positions, as had been the case with the Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar,” the BJP leader said.