That RSS and the BJP are serious and determined to retain Uttar Pradesh shows. The flying visit to Lucknow by Dattatreya Hosabale, the second man in command in the RSS and PM Modi’s confidante, was followed by a longer visit by the BJP Organising Secretary B.L. Santhosh, who individually met the ministers in the state, which observers believe was unusual if not unprecedented. This was quickly followed by a RSS huddle in Delhi which was joined by the PM. The plan clearly is not just retaining UP but retaining the brute majority in the assembly.
Such a comprehensive victory in Uttar Pradesh in 2022 is expected to overshadow the dismal mismanagement and misgovernance over the past few years and pave the ground for the general election in 2024.
While Jitin Prasada is a political lightweight in the state, observers say that his stature will be determined by BJP’s willingness to project him. Prasada, for example, has been vocal about the incarceration of women from Bikru village in Kanpur, the native village of slain gangster Vikas Dubey. The gangster, who was wanted for gunning down eight policemen and was on the run, died in a mysterious encounter killing when he was being driven back from Madhya Pradesh.
A section of Brahmin leaders even within the BJP have been critical of the continued incarceration of the women. “One of the women Khushi Dubey was married to Amar just three days before he was gunned down,” pointed out Umesh Dwivedi, a BJP MLC, in a letter to the chief minister, demanding release of these women.
They were echoing the demand voiced by AAP’s Sanjay Singh, who said, “Police should release the four innocent women and a two-and-a-halfyear-old child,” and alleged that gangster Amar Dubey’s wife, her mother, another slain gangster Heeru Dubey’s mother, her house help and her twoand-a-half-year-old son were in jail since July 2020. Bikru incident. This politics of vengeance must stop, he had demanded.
Appointment of Sanjay Srinet as Chairman of Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission intensified the ‘save Brahmin’ campaign in the political sphere to corner BJP and the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Srinet is a Thakur by caste.
