Yogi Adityanath: Advantage Or Liability

His appointment was a surprise to most, but there’s a lot of faith being pinned upon Yogi Adityanath.

WrittenBy:JP Shukla
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For all those who were taken by surprise by the announcement of Yogi Adityanath as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, you’ll be happy to know there’s still no clarity about how Adityanath’s name emerged at the top. However, party sources said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah themselves had chosen Adityanath with an eye to consolidating the party’s voter base for the 2019 general elections.

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Adityanath as Chief Minister sends out a clear message to the Opposition: that the Modi-Shah duo favour their politics of ignoring minorities while seeking people’s support during elections. Adityanath’s past speeches, with their communal overtones, are on record and may be quoted by the Opposition in future whenever it wants to embarrass BJP. Rather than being apologetic about these speeches, it seems BJP’s electoral game is to continue polarising voters along religious lines at least till the next Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

The BJP strategy counters the Congress talking of a grand alliance to dislodge BJP at the Centre in the next general elections. In the just-concluded Assembly elections, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Congress all competed to seek the support of minority communities. However, BJP won without any visible minority support. It will hope to repeat this performance in the next Lok Sabha elections.

As far as Adityanath’s relationship with BJP’s command centre, it’s noteworthy that Adityanath does not come from the core Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) cadre unlike most top BJP leaders. His guru and former head of Gorakhnath Math, late Mahant Avaidyanath, was a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha. Adityanath thus has a grounding in Hindutva ideology, but lacks the discipline of RSS. While he has been associated with the Ramjanmabhoomi ‘movement’, it has been in his own way and he has his own outfit Hindu Yuva Vahini.

RSS leaders have already announced that they had no role in deciding UP’s chief minister, which seems credible considering Adityanath’s background. Under the circumstances, it will be a challenge for the BJP to keep him disciplined. Additionally, he is no career politician, which means if at any point, Adityanath decides to go his own way, it would be difficult for the BJP to restrain him.

There are also speculations that the new chief minister was selected to keep Union Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, in check. Singh belongs to the powerful Thakur community as does Adityanath. So their disappointment at Singh not getting the position would be mollified. Incidentally, Pankaj Singh, Rajnath Singh’s son, has not been given a berth.

Party leaders say that the new position will automatically make Adityanath more responsible. The slogan “sabka sath, sabka vikas” (“development with everyone, for everyone”) has been quoted repeatedly. It holds out the hope that in UP, the government will function in an impartial manner providing benefits of an improved law and order situation and fruits of development without any discrimination.

One clear disadvantage for Adityanath is his lack of experience as an administrator. His two deputies, Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, are also freshers like him. Providing good governance over the next two years is thus a big challenge.

To his credit, Adityanath as a sanyasin enjoys the reputation of not being involved in or tolerant of corruption. By including a Muslim face, Mohsin Raza, in his ministry at the last moment, perhaps Yogi has indicated that he is ready to reconcile to modifying his hardliner image.
Despite all the aversion for him in the opposition, Adityanath has come to rule over UP at a critical time. The big question now is, even if Adityanath with his speeches was of advantage during the recent elections – and could be so when it’s time to campaign for 2019 – will he be an advantage or liability as a head of state?

The author can be contacted on Twitter @jpshuklaji

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