Yogi Adityanath will fight the assembly election from Gorakhpur—a move that is seen to be both safe for him and a downgrade of his ambitions.
The UP CM has been five-time Lok Sabha MP from Gorakhpur. He resigned on September 27, 2017 within six months after taking oath as the state’s CM.
Gorakhpur, the home of the peeth he heads, is in a sense Adityanath’s own backyard. Even after becoming the CM, he has gone to the district almost every week. Such is his bond with Gorakhpur, that a person who once served as district magistrate there, is today one of Adityanath’s closest and most powerful officers.
But the Gorakhpur electorate can also be tricky. Thus, when a by-election was made necessary by Adityanath’s election, the seat was lost to the Samajwadi Party. The man who won- Pravin Nishad is the son of the Nishad Party chief Sanjay Nishad. The Nishad Party is fighting the 2022 assembly elections with the BJP this time. Those who live in Gorakhpur say that in any subsequent election, voters are extolled to stay in and vote- as the by election was lost because voters assured of the BJP’s win, went on an extended weekend break. Polling day was March 11, 2018- a Sunday.
Gorakhpur is in Purvanchal, a region that is likely to see some keenly contested fights given that O.P. Rajbhar has tied up with the Samajwadi Party. By fielding Adityanath from there, the BJP is sending out to the voters a message about how seriously it is taking Purvanchal- a message that will also help party workers rejuvenate their efforts.
The reverence of the Gorakshnath peeth spills over to the neighbouring districts. This includes 28 seats in Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoriya and Maharajganj and 13 seats in Basti, Sant Kabirnagar and Siddharthnagar. At present the BJP has all 13 seats from the Basti division and has 24 of the 28 sears in the Gorakhpur division.
One of the many promises to Gorakhpur that Adityanath has not been able to keep is the Metro Rail. It has not progressed beyond an announcement. A mass rapid system of transport is a lifeline much needed by a city that sees constant traffic jams.
The upper caste vote in Gorakhpur is 85,000 within which Thakurs account for 25,000. Muslims and dalits account for 65,000 and 35,000. There are also 25,000 Christians among other voters.
Sunil Singh, a former close aide of Adityanath from the days when he had set up the Hindu Yuva Vahini said that Adityanath’s behaviour in Gorakhpur was different from how he behaved in the rest of the state. “He is denounced for being anti-Brahmin, but in Gorakhpur, he has been anti-Thakur. So here both the Brahmins and the Thakurs are opposed to him”.
In example, Singh cites the National Security Act being slapped on him and being imprisoned for nine months not long after Adityanath assumed power.
The SP has been discussing two distinct strategies to defeat Adityanath. The first is to have a strong Brahmin candidate against him- the name being tossed about is of Shubhvati Shukla- the wife of a deceased BJP state vice president. The second is to bring within its folds Radha Mohan Das Agarwal- the MLA who lost his ticket to accommodate Adityanath.
The choice of Gorakhpur for Yogi instead of Ayodhya or Mathura, critics say, is his relegation to just any assembly seat in the state. Had he contested from Ayodhya, he would have been seen as a strong symbol of hindutva. Even Mathura for that matter from where there are voices demanding ‘freeing’ the birthplace of Lord Krishna. Positively however, while fighting from Gorakhpur does not give him the symbolic tag, he will be perceived as accommodating of all. And such a moderate image could only serve him well were he to have greater political aspirations.
