After making footprints in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, now it is time for the Modi led NDA government re-calibrate it’s strategy to win Uttar Pradesh in 2017. The party president Amit Shah has rolled out micro-managers who are traversing every knock and corner of Uttar Pradesh, keeping the BJP cadre on their toes. Shah is using his close aides from Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh (RSS) as game-changers.
Sunil Bansal,47-year-old, who is playing a pivotal role as the state general secretary of Uttar Pradesh and was brought from Rajasthan to the war room in Lucknow by Shah, who was then UP in-charge, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. Bansal was also a pracharak, deputed to the ABVP and is known for his aggressive political campaigning. According to sources, he is also guiding the party’s new state unit chief Keshav Prasad Maurya, who is also from a Sangh background.
He was formerly national convener of ABVP’s Youth against Corruption, launched in 2011. Sources said, Bansal’s work in the West Bengal elections was highly appreciated. The BJP was second in 30 to 40 seats. For the first time since 1991 (when the party bagged 11.43 per cent of the vote), the party got a double-digit vote share (12 per cent).
BJP had divided the state into six kshetras( zones): Awadh, Kanpur-Bundelkhand, Gorakhpur, Braj, Kashi and Paschim. Each kshetra will have one president — a BJP leader with a RSS background.
Sources said, in all likelihood BJP will have a number of new faces in Uttar Pradesh in upcoming polls. The older RSS workers in the state, having VHP background and associated with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement will be phased out and a new ‘young’ group of Vidyarthi Parishad activists is being drafted in. The party is trying to inject fresh blood, who would harp on the party’s development agenda rather than contentious issues.
RSS functionaries who are micro-managing the BJP’s UP strategy have started consultations with key stakeholders in the state also. The consultation process is part of the larger exercise to assess and evaluate views within.