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Bold Monk
June 4, 2024. As the Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha votes were being counted, it became obvious the lotus was wilting with the passage of the day. The 400-paar dream had gone bust. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath went into a huddle with his trusted aides; the results were a big jolt to both the BJP and him. His enemies at the state and in New Delhi would be baying for his blood. His prestige is at stake in the state elections three-and-a-half years away. The first instruction the CM issued to senior bureaucrats was to fill up existing vacancies in state jobs pronto.
Two days later, he held a follow-up meeting with officers from different commissions and recruitment boards like UPPCL, UPSC Subordinate City Selection Commission, and the Police Recruitment and Promotion Board. Earlier in the day, he had called a meeting of ministers to assess the work done by each department.
“A lobby is active against Yogi to provoke party leaders and allies to target the state government and paint its image as bleak. Any naive person can see it,” says a senior BJP leader. Yogi Adityanath is no slacker. He has formed a 16-member group of ministers to oversee the bypoll preparations. A key responsibility of his team is to address the concerns of the party workers. Yogi has also finalised his itinerary to meet groups of public representatives on a daily basis for feedback and address their concerns.
Why would BJP destabilise its most powerful and effective chief minister?
According to Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s conspiracy theory, Yogi is the last remaining threat to Amit Shah’s candidature for the PM’s post after Modi. “If they form the government, Yogi Adityanath will be removed from the CM’s post within two months,” Kejriwal had warned. However, the astute monk is BJP’s best vote catcher after Modi, and enjoys full support from the RSS and its sister outfits. A meeting scheduled in Lucknow by the RSS to make peace between the warring factions was cancelled when the Sangh did not wish to be seen as interfering directly in party politics; the news of the meeting is being denied by senior BJP netas.
FROM PATRON TO NEMESIS
Ironically, it was Shah who backed Yogi as chief minister in 2017. Yogi’s career turnaround happened in 2013 when Shah took charge of UP BJP. One of his visits was to Gorakhpur Mutt where he assured Yogi of his value to the party. Soon Yogi was made in-charge of UP Assembly bypolls held after the 2014 LS elections. The results were not up to the mark. Shah came forward to shield Yogi and kept him out of party engagements.
However, as 2017 state assembly approached, Yogi was invited to attend key meetings to discuss ticket distribution. In a rare appearance in Lucknow in January 2017, Yogi was also on the dais for the launch of BJP’s manifesto. With Shah at the helm of affairs, the rise in Yogi’s stature was palpable. However, this is also a fact that when he took over as UP CM in March, 2017, Yogi hardly had any interaction with the state BJP cadre. His politics was relegated to Gorakhpur and Delhi, as he was one of the busiest MPs known for raising issues of his constituency.
The genesis for the current crisis lies in the political developments in Delhi and Lucknow in early 2017. Five days after BJP’s landslide victory of 312 of 403 seats in UP Assembly elections, five-time MP Yogi Adityanath was called by Amit Shah for a jaw-jaw. The BJP parliamentary board’s meeting to decide UP’s new CM ended inconclusively. It was left to Shah to take the final call. In the race were state chief Keshav Maurya and Union Minister Manoj Sinha, now J&K’s LG. Shah reportedly offered Yogi a Union cabinet berth that was met with a polite ‘no’.
“Getting a ministry when the government was already nearly three years into its tenure was not something I desired,” he reportedly said. Shah didn’t mind. In parting, he told Yogi that the soft-spoken sanyasi was in the shortlist for the top job and PM Modi would take a final decision. Unaware of the developments, Maurya was distributing laddoos outside Parliament to celebrate BJP’s big wins in UP and Uttarakhand. Shah was also present. Since ‘Kaun Banega Mukhyamantri?’ was the hottest topic in Lucknow, reporters questioned Shah.
The answer, though flattering, sealed Maurya’s fate. Gesturing towards Maurya, he said on camera: “Jise Keshav chahein (whosoever Keshav wants).” Soon enough, Maurya developed chest pain and had to be hospitalised. Although he was discharged the same day, it was obvious the BJP’s powerful OBC face was out of the race. A secret phone call by Shah at 6.45 pm on March 17, 2017, inviting Yogi to come to Delhi was a turning point: ‘Laut aaiye’ (Please come back). There was no flight or train to Delhi at that time. A private plane was sent the next morning. Yogi landed in Delhi at 9 am on March 18, and was driven straightaway to Piyush Goyal’s house. There Shah broke the suspense and asked Yogi to go to Lucknow to assume charge as chief minister.
The development remained a secret till the legislature party meet happened at Lucknow’s Lok Bhavan at 5 pm the same day. The BJP’s senior-most MLA Suresh Khanna proposed Yogi’s name for the top post. The reticent monk took oath as the CM the following day. The head office’s placatory gesture was to make Maurya and Lucknow mayor Dinesh Sharma his two deputies. Thus began the ‘Yogi Era’ in UP, engineered to a large extent by astute planning by Shah and the disquiet of the two new deputy CMs.
THE MAURYA UMPIRE
Does the current crisis indicate that equations have changed between the top chieftains? UPCC chief Ajay Rai says: “Maurya is just a pawn in the battle between Shah and Yogi. In fact, Shah is using different pawns against Yogi. It is affecting the state. They were elected by the people to work for them and now they are wasting time and resources in settling personal scores, leaving the people to suffer.
Yogi, in order to consolidate his position, is taking decisions unmindfully.” Maurya’s game is to pitch himself as the common ‘karyakarta’s champion and get the Centre to sit up: a scapegoat is needed for every debacle and who else but his nemesis and the CM? In the political culture of sacrificing the CM after a poll flop in both national parties, Yogi is no pushover. Does Maurya have another deeper purpose in raising his volume. “He is probably promoting himself as the future BJP chief,” said a BJP neta, as usual unwilling to be quoted; there seems to be no hurry to replace JP Nadda until “the Maharashtra and Haryana elections are over,” according to the same source.
While the BJP state unit under Maurya was firing blanks at Yogi, he hit the ground running. He immediately resumed Janata Darshan—a direct interface session with people to know their issues firsthand—which was shut for three months after the Model Code of Conduct came into place. After the shock of June 4, the BJP is struggling to instil confidence in the cadre that it can breach the SP bastions in the upcoming 10 bypolls like it did in Rampur, Suar and Azamgarh in 2022.
However, a cause for concern is that its vote share had dramatically declined to 41.37 per cent from an all-time high of 49.98 per cent in 2019.Though the jump in its tally in the Assembly with a few seats won’t make much of a difference, it will at least raise the workers’ morale from the bog of dejection and disillusionment. Moreover, the bypoll results will expose the real depth of the issues of leadership plaguing the BJP. The Mahant of Gorakhpur realises that.
The saffron-robed chief minister has formed a group of 16 ministers to oversee the preparations for the bypolls and the BJP state unit formed its own team a few days later. It’s a tall order for the saffron party. It won just three out of the 10 seats in 2022; the Samajwadi Party had five. The two remaining seats were shared by BJP allies, NISHAD Party and RLD. The buzz is that the BJP could contest all 10 seats on its own and bite the bullet, disregarding its allies. BJP insiders feel that Maurya, an influential OBC leader, who had led the party to unprecedented victory in 2017 as the state unit chief, is attempting to fashion himself as an alternative to Yogi.
AS THE CANNONBALLS FLY
The Opposition is delighted by the saffron mess. “The BJP, as a party, is getting weak day-by-day. Once which claimed itself to be a party with a difference has now become a party of differences. Maurya, who was sidelined in the party earlier, is now asserting himself as the party and the state government are on the backfoot after the Lok Sabha debacle,” says SP’s Abdul Hafeez Gandhi. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav is on steroids, targeting the ‘civil war’ in the saffron phalanx.
“In the heat of the struggle for power within the BJP, governance and administration in UP is on the back-burner. The sabotage politics the BJP employed in other parties is being unleashed within itself,” says the SP chief. Congress party leader Surendra Rajput calls the standoff “an internecine battle between the two senior most persons in the state government, which is badly affecting the youth”.
Rajput doesn’t see the tussle as a rift between Yogi and Maurya. “It is a battle among the Lucknow, Delhi and Gujarat lobbies. Its root is the distribution of wealth and illegitimate riches. Today, we find that all contracts beyond `10 crore go to Gujarati firms based in UP. The fight is against Gujarati firms,” he alleges.
The vultures are circling the carcass of defeat. Badlapur MLA Ramesh Chandra Mishra, for example, warned that the “party was in a precarious state” and might get ousted from power in the 2027 Assembly elections. Ex-minister and party veteran Moti Singh called corruption in thanas and tehsils as unprecedented. Both leaders walked back their utterances later, but the damage was done.
The BJP’s allies jumped on the ‘Corner Yogi’ campaign. Apna Dal (S) president and Modi minister Anupriya Patel wrote to the CM alleging that quota rules were not being followed properly in government appointments. NISHAD Party chief Sanjay Nishad lambasted the use of bulldozers, symbolising Yogi government’s crackdown against the mafia. He too backtracked. The newly-inducted NDA ally Rashtriya Lok Dal’s national general secretary and national spokesperson says,
“After every election, each party reviews its performance and it should happen here also. Secondly, the Opposition has its right to condemn and criticise the ruling party over its internal politics. The more the BJP or, for that matter, any political party will review its performance, the more it will gain.” Arun Rajbhar, senior leader Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), BJP ally and Yogi minister, says, “Despite the buzz and ongoing discussions, the upheaval in the ruling BJP will not affect the CM’s position at all. There are certain pockets where the workers have issues that have not been addressed, and the Opposition is making it an issue. But yes, changes in the organisation will certainly take place,” adds Rajbhar.
RLD’s Anupam Mishra doesn’t see the bickering threatening the CM’s position because Yogi’s performance “has been exemplary in the state and everyone acknowledges and appreciates it”.
YOGI THE SURVIVOR
Over the years, the Central BJP, aware of Yogi’s rising popularity and the Sangh’s support for his stringent anti-crime drive and uncompromising pro-Hindutva posture, have been trying to rein him in through parachute appointments and ambiguous bureaucratic decisions. Today is not the first time that Yogi is in the crosshairs. “As the chief minister, Yogi has been facing challenges from the Centre,” says AK Mishra, a prominent political consultant in Lucknow. When Yogi’s first tenure was marred by the Covid pandemic, the Centre sent IAS officer AK Sharma to Lucknow after offering him VRS two years before his retirement.
The Gujarat-cadre officer had been in-charge of the Vibrant Gujarat campaign and served in Modi’s PMO. It was widely speculated that he would be given a key post in the Yogi cabinet: deputy CM’s position or Home. Sharma’s relocation was viewed as a move to curtail Yogi’s power before the state polls. He was also inducted in the state BJP as vice-president and sent to the Vidhan Parishad. The narrative around Yogi’s ‘downsizing’ or even ‘removal’ was kept alive by the anti-Yogi camp for most of 2021.
However, his performance as the CM during the pandemic, like upgrading health facilities, a forceful vaccination drive and efficient delivery of welfare schemes, received strong backing from the RSS and BJP’s top brass. Now after seven years Yogi has got the chief secretary of his choice. Manoj Kumar Singh took charge after DS Mishra—again sent by the Centre just a day before his retirement in December 2021—packed his bags.
A trusted lieutenant of PM Modi, he had been given two more extensions. But Yogi still doesn’t have his ‘own trusted DGP’ following the removal of Mukul Goyal after the 2022 state elections. Goyal was reportedly not working in accordance to Yogi’s instructions and was charged with ‘neglect of duty’ and ‘indolence’. The present state police chief Prashant Kumar is the ‘acting DGP’.
The mystique of Modi lies in his art of giving mixed signals of symbolism. In November 2021, when Modi was in Lucknow, he called Yogi to Raj Bhavan where he was staying, for a photoshoot. He posted the picture soon after, hand on Yogi’s shoulder, on social media. It went viral. Modi coined two terms: ‘double engine ki sarkar’ for the combined might of his and Yogi’s government, and ‘UP+Yogi= Upyogi’.
“If the BJP managed to win 255 seats despite a resurgent SP, it was largely due to Yogi’s personal integrity and popularity. The improved law and order and efficient delivery of welfare schemes under his regime were the major factors. Under him, UP is on top in the implementation of most central government schemes,” says a senior bureaucrat, requesting anonymity.
With Assembly polls still three years away, BJP has the time for course correction in the party. Does Yogi really have PM ambitions? Replying to Kejriwal’s claims, the high priest of UP politics retorted that he would not think twice about quitting power for the sake of upholding party ideology and his commitment to it. The paradigm has changed and the BJP is in a state of flux. All said and done, in 2027, the ballot box will carry the label: ‘Yogi Adityanath, Handle With Care’.
The New Drawing Board
If Yogi Adityanath seems to be under siege, the situation is not new to him. He has been a lone ranger right from the beginning of his political career. Even in the past seven years of his tenure as the CM, he had been put against nasty narratives—both real and imaginary—on several occasions. Yogi always held his ground tightly. He is unlikely to be doing anything different this time. On his part, though, he has swiftly started the ‘course correction’ by instructing his team to address the issues of party workers. Besides, taking the forthcoming Assembly bypolls to 10 seats as a chance for redemption of 2024 Lok Sabha loss. He has hit the ground running to start the preparations. He formed his own 16-member team of ministers, even before the state BJP unit could do it, to oversee preparations for these bypolls.
His actions speak louder than him. Tightening his grip further on governance, he will be nastier with the corrupt.
In order to counter the narrative of his detractors, Yogi will beat his image of being ‘over dependent’ on bureaucracy.
He will stress grievance redressal of party cadre, lawmakers by increasing his accessibility to them besides lending a patient ear to allies as well.
Yogi summed up his strategic options while responding to Arvind Kejriwal’s claims floated during the LS poll campaign, by reiterating that he would not think twice before quitting power for the sake of party ideology and commitment.
Savvy Sadhu
In the morning, the white marble-paved ground on both sides of a road inside Gorakhpur Ashram is crowded. There are Hindus wearing tikas, Muslims in their caps and up-to-the-ankle pajamas, women with dupattas drawn over their heads, ex-servicemen and other petitioners. They are waiting for their ‘mahant’ to appear. A line of men in white shirts sit at tables with typewriters. When Yogi steps out, there is visible relief.
Everyone has a complaint, mostly concerning some government problem. The Monk of Gorakhpur listens to each one carefully. The complaints he is satisfied with are genuine; he immediately orders a typist to write it out and send to Lucknow or Delhi. Usually the problem is solved. Yogi’s recommendation is not to be taken lightly in Lucknow or Delhi. This was before he became chief minister.
Nothing has changed. It’s said in Gorakhpur that the BJP needs Yogi more than the other way round. He draws his strength from the Goraksha Peeth which enjoys wide influence from eastern UP to Nepal. He was not officially a member of the BJP when he became their youngest MP at 26, in 1998. His guru Mahant Awaidyanath had christened Ajay Singh Bisht, a science graduate from Garhwal, his heir apparent in 1994, who became Yogi Adityanath. In the process he inherited Awaidyanath’s political legacy.
Interestingly, both Adityanath, Awaidyanath and Dada Guru (Mahant Digvijay Nath), were associated with Hindu Mahasabha and not BJP or the Jana Sangh. The two streams of Hindutva came together with the launch of the Ram Temple movement in the 1980s when Mahant Awaidyanath was made its leader and the RSS and BJP formally joined it. Awaidyanath contested and won from Gorakhpur in 1989 Lok Sabha polls on a Hindu Mahasabha ticket. Then in 1991 and 1996, he won on a BJP ticket. Then on, from 1998 to 2014, the mantle fell on Yogi who retained the seat five times consecutively, with his victory margin increasing with each election.
The key to understanding Yogi is to analyse his dual personality. He is a high-profile MP, respected and hated by Hindu and secular parties alike. Although a loner, who rarely made small talk with journalists in Central Hall in the days when the press was allowed in, he never hesitated in dissenting on an issue which went against his ethical framework.
In 2002 Assembly elections, when the BJP denied a ticket to Radha Mohan Das Agarwal, a candidate he backed, he defied the High Command and fielded Agarwal on a Hindu Mahasabha ticket against BJP’s official candidate, Shiv Pratap Shukla. Agarwal defeated the four-time MLA Shukla, who later became MoS finance in Modi 1.0 Cabinet, and continued to hold the seat till 2017, but as a BJP candidate. He vacated the seat for Yogi in 2022 polls and was rewarded with a Rajya Sabha seat.
The BJP has reason to be wary of its charismatic sanyasi whose image was of a bairagi who slept on the floor without air conditioning in summer when temperatures in UP could touch 48oC, and a monk with a Machiavellian mind and a loyal militant following. After becoming an MP for the first time, one of Yogi’s crucial moves was to form the Hindu Yuva Vahini in 2002.
Though his political adversaries branded it as ‘Yogi’s Militant Army’, its agenda was to protect and uplift the Dalits and downtrodden. According to one of Yogi’s aides from Gorakhpur, “cow protection was its primary task”. Hindu Yuva Vahini followed the Mutt’s tradition of ‘sahbhoj’ (community feast) started by Awaidyanath in which Vahini members would break bread with Dalits. Yogi disbanded it after becoming chief minister in 2017.
The BJP too is flipping the pages of its political album while dealing with Yogi: when he was an MP, on at least two occasions he was on the verge of parting ways with the BJP, but not without showing off his clout. In the run-up to the 2007 Assembly polls, his views were not given much importance in the selection of candidates. Yogi skipped the BJP national executive meet held in Lucknow in December, 2006.
Instead he organised a Virat Hindu Mahasammelan in Gorakhpur on the same dates. The RSS and many top BJP leaders attended the ‘parallel event’. The High Command backtracked. Just before the 2007 polls, he threatened to field 70 candidates, but then-deputy PM LK Advani, with whom he shared a good rapport, managed to convince him otherwise. Again in 2012, Advani placated him when the mahant threatened to quit when the party intended to induct NRHM scam-tainted Babu Singh Kushwaha.
The transition of Yogi from a saffron mahant in Parliament to the saffron chief minister of a politically volatile state required a canny intuition to negotiate the treacherous marshland of Centre-state politics. His uncompromising crusade against baahubalis have brought security in UP from kidnappings of industrialists and their families, political murders and terrorism. An agenda that segued development, investment and religion earned him a record second straight win in the 2022 state polls.
Under him, UP is India’s third biggest economy and has jumped from 11th to second position in ease of doing business. His government claims to have given 6.5 lakh government jobs. Yogi is unlikely to be unemployed any time soon. The knives are already out and are being sharpened before the bypolls. Yogi has UP as his political empire and Gorakhpur as his spiritual capital. The BJP may win or lose in the bypoll constituencies at stake, but Yogi is forever in UP.
How it Stacks up
The Centre | BJP high command, almost like Congress in its heydays, seems to believe in a strong Centre. Strong state leaders don’t fit into its scheme of things. Big satraps like Shivraj Singh Chauhan, Vasundhara Raje, Uma Bharati and Raman Singh, have all fallen by the wayside. Yogi Adityanath is a strong exception, who has earned his stature by a record ‘repeat victory’ in the 2022 UP polls. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal used this narrative to target BJP and confuse saffron voters that ‘Yogi would be removed if BJP gets more than 400 seats in the LS polls’
Keshav Maurya | Belonging to the Kushwaha caste, this prominent OBC face was the state unit chief and a contender to the CM’s chair in 2017 when BJP swept the poll. But he had to be content with the deputy CM’s post under Yogi. He continues to hold the post with low-key ministry like rural development. Maurya may be eyeing the seat of BJP state chief again or aspiring for a proper ‘rehab’ with a plum portfolio
Brajesh Pathak | The other deputy CM, joined BJP just before the 2017 Assembly polls and emerged as prominent Brahmin face of the party. His rise in the BJP has been swift—from law minister in Yogi 1.0 Cabinet to now deputy CM. As law minister, he had raised questions over efficacy of health services in UP during the pandemic. Now lording over the entire health, family welfare and medical education departments, his ambitions are no secret
Ministers, MLAs | Although Yogi has a share among ministers and MLAs, there are some who complain that his government is run by bureaucrats. Be it Covid control or planning for investors summit, officers rule the roost. Lawmakers want the lion’s share with grassroots officers running thanas and tehsils listening to them