Rajnath may spearhead BJP’s UP campaign

Given the political enormity of the upcoming polls for the UP assembly, the ruling BJP may fall back on party veteran Rajnath Singh to lead the campaign. Though the Union Home Minister has expressed  reluctance at being projected as the chief ministerial candidate, given his present stature in the party and national politics, he may however agree to lead a team of leaders who enjoy influence in certain pockets and communities.

Given the setback in Bihar polls last year, the party is in no mood to risk the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah as poll mascots in the politically most significant state of Uttar Pradesh.

“Given UP’s unique socio-political dynamics and it being a bigger challenge than Assam or any other state where BJP won post the 2014 Lok Sabha mandate, the leadership feels it would be safe to enter the UP fray with a pantheon of leaders with Rajnath Singh at it’s helm,” sources close to party leadership added. The other leaders who could be included in this group are union ministers Uma Bharti (Lodh-Bundelkhand), Kalraj Mishra (Brahmin-Poorvanchal), Sanjeev K Baliyan (Jat-west UP), firebrand MPs Mahanth Adityanath (Thakur-Eastern Terai) and the youthful face of Varun Gandhi.

In UP, unlike Assam, BJP’s contest would be with politically much stronger regional parties and not a ‘downhill’ Congress. Well-placed sources said that duplication of  the Assam campaign model, wherein it went to polls with a chief ministerial face in Sarbananda Sonowal and another local leader Himanta Biswa Sarma as campaign manager, was difficult in UP as there was no local leader with a pan-UP appeal.

“The most popular local leader as per the party’s own estimates is Lok Sabha member Varun Gandhi but the leadership doesn’t trust him for his flamboyant ways and reaching out to popular masses on his own initiative,” said a senior party leader. Gandhi for past few months has worked overtime to shrug off an aggressive Hinduvta image which had stuck to him during the Lok Sabha poll campaign.

On the other hand, other contenders like Gorakhpur MP Mahanth Aditya Nath do not have appeal beyond their area of influence, though he fits the larger Sangh agenda of aggressive Hinduvta. The leadership also has doubts over the ability of Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani to become the party’s face chief ministerial face as she would have to fend off the political challenge of stalwarts from Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party. Observers pointed to the Delhi fiasco where a “apolitical face” Kiran Bedi was fielded by party and it ended in a poll disaster.