LUCKNOW: After a humiliating defeat in Uttar Pradesh in recently-concluded Lok Sabha election, while on one hand, the ruling BJP is trying to reach to the root of its dismal performance, on the other, it is about to launch a sharp counter campaign to neutralise the opposition’s poll narrative woven around the ‘threat to Constitution’.
With a litmus test of the popularity staring at the party in the state where 10 assembly seats, vacated after the Lok Sabha polls, are set to go to the by-election in the days to come, the BJP is planning course correction to consolidate its position ahead of the upcoming electoral challenge.
While UP CM Yogi Adityanath is personally interacting with party workers exhorting them to be ready for the 2027 assembly battle by reaching out to the people, mitigating their grievances and dispelling the myth woven around the fake narrative of “changing the Constitution” by the Opposition during general election, a host of other senior state leaders of the ruling party have also stressed on the need of carrying out a ground-level concerted campaign to “expose the ongoing opposition propaganda” from villages to blocks to cities.
As per the highly-placed sources in BJP, the exhaustive campaign is likely to be carried out in sync with the Sangh Parivaar by involving and other associated outfits.
The party leadership has got into alert mode after receiving the feedback from the ground that the wounds inflicted by the opposition election narrative may go a long way hitting the prospects of the ruling combine in the upcoming by-polls.
The suggestion, sources said, cropped up during a series of review meetings the BJP in the aftermath of its tally dwindling from 62 in 2019 to 33 in 2024.
According to senior BJP leader, a host of ground-level reports indicated that the opposition, especially the Congress, with the help of several NGOs, got people enrolled under its scheme of providing a financial assistance of Rs 1 lakh per annum to women. “We were caught unawares and failed to recognise the designs of the opposition. But now it is time to pay back with a matching campaign,” said a senior party leader.
The party, said the sources, is down to re-strategize its course in the run up to the assembly bypolls urgently. The aggressive projection of the Emergency imposed by the former PM Indira Gandhi in 1975 was a part of the same strategy.
"A huge cause of concern is the drifting away of out voters towards the opposition camp in respectable chunk. We have to work hard to re-mobilise our support base which gravitated to the opposition despite a host of welfare schemes implemented flawlessly in the state benefitting people a great deal,” said another senior leader of the ruling party.