Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will today join BJP chief Amit Shah's 'Jan Raksha Yatra', the 15-day foot march that the latter began from Kerala's Kannur district on Tuesday. Yogi has landed in Kerala and is en route to join the BJP march, launched to protest the CPI (M)'s alleged violence against workers of his party.
Yogi's participation in the rally has already gained much attention. The party is trying to repeat UP assembly poll experiment, in which Yogi campaigned for the party quite extensively, particularly in western UP to polarize votes and hone party’s Hindutva agenda. The BJP won the state elections with a spectacular majority.
According to party sources in Lucknow, Shah plans to use Yogi's 'services' in Kerala, and hence, has inducted Yogi in the 15-day ‘Jan Raksha’ rally.
The message is quite clear—the BJP is not shying away from flaunting its Hindutva colours in a state where BJP or Hindutva politics have never been mainstream.
Kerala has been a tough bastion for the BJP since long. It is believed in political circles that Yogi will be the party’s poster boy in Kerala. The BJP is trying to gain a foothold in the state by raking up Hindutva issue.
Yogi’s rallies had attracted huge crowd in UP assembly polls. The party high command is confident that he will rake up the Hindutva issue quite deftly and succeed in attracting a particular class of the society.
There is no denying the fact that Yogi has been a firebrand leader. He became an MP from Gorakhpur first time in 1998. Since then, he has been an MP for five times before becoming the chief minister of UP. During his initial years, with the help of his ‘Hindu Yuva Vahini’ (a non-political outfit), he vigorously raised many local and district level issues and had locked horns with the administration several times. Besides Gorakhpur, Yogi has a good influence in many assembly seats in nearby district of eastern UP, too.
