Ahmedabad (Gujarat), October 14 | The Bharatiya Janata Party’s decision to press into service Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath in Gujarat, especially in its industrial south-west part, is being interpreted in different ways by political pundits.
Normally a chief minister of other state attends any political rally during election campaign, but Yogi is touring this western state just before the Election Commission is to announce the date(s) for the Assembly polls.
What is ironical is that Yogi is in Gujarat when the BJP chief Amit Shah is spending time in Kerala and Uttar Pradesh, especially in Rahul Gandhi’s parliamentary constituency, Amethi. So if Shah targeted Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi in UP, Yogi did the same in his own style in Gujarat.
Political observers are surprised over this sort of role reversal as Yogi has hardly anything to offer as the chief minister of India’s largest populated state for the last seven months. In contrast Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Raman Singh have been ruling Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh respectively for the last 14 years. They are yet to address any public meeting in Gujarat in recent times.
In fact Chauhan, along with the CMs of Rajasthan and Maharashtra, were invited to the Sardar Sarovar Dam function on September 17, yet none of them chose to grace the occasion. That was a big embarrassment for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he wanted to politically en cash the inauguration of the Dam.
Analysts are of the view that as the slogan of development is not working in Gujarat and even Amit Shah had to face hostile crowd in his home state why not fall back on hardline Hindutva policy.
Besides, Yogi is touring that part of Gujarat where there are sizeable working class population from UP and Bihar. The economic slow down has rendered a large number of them, especially in Surat, Vapi and Valsad, unemployed. There is restlessness and anger against the BJP.
“The BJP top brass wants to distract the attention from the economic issues and are trying to rake up the old issue of religion to woo voters. None would have been better than Yogi,” said a Gujarat watcher.
The saffron party think-tank is observing that for the first time in last 15 years Gujarat’s own duo––Narendra Modi and Amit Shah––are losing touch. That is why Yogi was imported from UP. For Yogi this is the best time to pay back as Modi and Shah had played a big role in his victory in UP.
