A strong oratory was on display both inside Parliament and in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly on Wednesday when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP CM Yogi Adityanath hit out at the opposition. Modi singled out the Congress in Rajya Sabha, calling it a party that has run out of ‘warranty’ and its leader Rahul Gandhi as “a startup” who has proved to be “a non-starter”. In a jibe, without naming TMC chief Mamata Banerjee who had challenged the Congress to win 40 Lok Sabha seats, Modi said, “I am praying that the Congress should at least protect its 40 seats”. PM Modi alleged that the Congress was always against SC and ST reservations. He read out Jawaharlal Nehru’s letters to assert that India’s first Prime Minister had opposed reservations in jobs for scheduled castes and tribes on the grounds that this would promote inefficiency and lower standards of governance. He lashed out at the Karnataka Congress government for coining the slogan “Hamara tax, Hamara money”, saying nothing can be worse. His remarks came on a day the Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah along with his ministers and party leaders staged a dharna in Delhi to highlight alleged injustice by the Centre in transferring tax revenue to his state. Modi said, “We must look at India as one. What will happen if states from the east refuse to send coal to other states? Or Himalayan states start claiming rights over river water share? What would have happened if eastern states had stopped the supply of medical oxygen to all the states during the Covid pandemic?”
Modi alleged that Congress is peddling a dangerous narrative to create a North-South divide. Modi alleged that Congress is still stuck in the 20th century mindset and its thought process has become outdated. “There was a time when the Congress ruled India and today its own allies are challenging the party to win 40 seats”, he said. Oozing confidence, Modi said, people have already started saying Modi 3.0 after the elections. He said he would ensure that India would become the third-largest economy in the world. Modi did not refer to the Ram temple or any matter relating to religion, but 530 km away from Delhi, in Lucknow, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath made his point on the Ayodhya temple issue, while speaking in the state assembly. Yogi clearly indicated that Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi and Eidgah-Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura are now on the agenda. Yogi publicly endorsed the demand for handing over these Muslim shrines to the Hindus. He drew examples from Mahabharata and said, Lord Krishna, as envoy for Pandavas, had asked for only five villages, but Duryodhana rejected the demand saying not a needle size of land would be given. This led to the Mahabharata war in which the entire Kaurava dynasty was killed. Yogi said, “Similarly Hindus had asked for only three shrines in Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura, but they were made the butt of jokes. Injustice was done to all these three religious places… Here, too, they became adamant, and when this adamant attitude was laced with politics and efforts were made to turn these issues into vote-bank politics, disputes became complicated.”
Yogi hit out at Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s PDA (Picchda, Dalit, Alpasankhyak) plank and described this acronym as ‘Parivar Development Authority’. Yogi said that Akhilesh Yadav can never think beyond his family, and “the problem is that he even discriminates against his own family members, particularly his uncle (reference to Shivpal Yadav)”. Analyzing both the speeches of Modi and Yogi, one can say that Modi wants to focus on Congress as its main rival in the Lok Sabha elections. BJP leadership may face challenges in some states if all opposition parties join hands, but now that Nitish Kumar and his JD-U are back in NDA, Mamata Banerjee has practically walked out of the alliance, and Jayant Chaudhary of Rashtriya Lok Dal is about to ditch the combine, the INDI alliance, for all practical purposes, is now a divided house. Only in states like Rajasthan, MP, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Assam, Gujarat, Karnataka and Telangana, the Congress will give fight to BJP.
There are nearly 300 Lok Sabha seats which will witness a straight fight between BJP and Congress. This is the reason why Modi is focusing his attacks on Congress. BJP has high hopes from Uttar Pradesh, which has the largest number of 80 LS seats. Ram temple has been built in Ayodhya, Modi’s constituency is Varanasi and Yogi Adityanath is ruling the state. The main challenger is Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party. One thing is certain. Nobody can challenge Yogi Adityanath as far as restoring law and order in UP is concerned. This is a sea change which the average citizen in UP feels in daily life. People sleep peacefully, unlike the days when gangsters made people sleepless. Secondly, the inauguration of Ram temple in Ayodhya has infused fresh energy in Yogi Adityanath. Ayodhya is not only Lord Ram’s birthplace and a spiritual place, it has now become a big centre on the world tourism map. The effect is being felt across Uttar Pradesh. As far as politics is concerned, Yogi has almost decimated the Congress in UP, and in the last four elections, the BJP has defeated the Samajwadi Party, even when it was in alliance with BSP or Congress. This time, efforts to forge INDI alliance in UP have faced critical problems. Already RLD’s Jayant Chaudhary wants to quit the alliance, and Telugu Desam Party Chandrababu Naidu is also in the queue to join NDA. These are big setbacks for the anti-Modi front.
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