BJP holds crucial election meet in Uttar Pradesh

The core committee of the Uttar Pradesh unit of the BJP met at the party headquarters

 ITDC INDIA EPRESS/ITDC NEWS R Ahead of the crucial 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, BJP chief J.P. Nadda and other national leaders of the party held a meeting with senior leaders from the state, including Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. The core committee of the Uttar Pradesh unit of the BJP met at the party headquarters in the presence of Nadda. According to reports, the senior leaders held intense discussions for more than three-and-a-half hours to devise a strategy for the assembly polls due early next year.

The meeting was attended by Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan (BJP in-charge for the Uttar Pradesh polls), national vice president of the party Radha Mohan Singh, both the deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, state party chief Swatantra Dev Singh and general secretary of state BJP (organisation) Sunil Bansal, among others.

With high risk-high reward political moves like the withdrawal of the three contentious farm laws, the BJP plans to infuse fresh momentum in its political drive to retain dominance in Uttar Pradesh. PM Modi had made the announcement on the birth anniversary of Sikhism founder Guru Nanak, one of the holiest days in the Sikh calendar, and quoted their last Guru Gobind Singh to stress on his intention to do good work.

The BJP's stakes are the highest in UP, where it had won an unprecedented 312 seats in the 403-member assembly in 2017. With sections of Jats seemingly angry with the BJP and even several Jat leaders of the party admitting to slide in their fortunes in the western UP, where the community is concentrated, the region was seen as a roadblock in its efforts to repeat its 2017 show in the upcoming polls, more so as the Samajwadi Party had joined hands with the Rashtriya Lok Dal to pose a united challenge.

Adding to it has been the grouse of sugarcane farmers over relatively low returns on their produce.

The decision to roll back the farm laws will go a long way in placating the community, which had backed the saffron party wholeheartedly in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls besides the 2017 assembly polls, and may queer the opposition's pitch for forging a social alliance of Jats and several smaller communities with Muslims, another numerically strong group in the region, against the BJP.

-Inputs from agencies