By Sushil Kutty
AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal’s nemesis Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is in town, asking funny questions like will Kejriwal take a bath in the Yamuna? The ‘Yogi’ was in the nation’s capital fresh from a dip in the Ganga-Yamuna-Saraswati ‘Sangam’ in Prayagraj, where the ‘Mahakumbh’ is currently on at a scale never seen before.
All of us know that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath never tires of hoisting ‘Hindu first’ on his saffron-robed shoulders and he has been calling Kejriwal a traitor ever since arriving in Delhi in a cavalcade, taking the road instead of a chopper. Kejriwal responded late in the evening to the Yogi’s taunt but there was no zing to the response. The former Chief Minister appeared at a loss for words and Yogi Adityanath is a hard one to pin down.
Besides, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has a number of plus points which are minus in the book listing Kejriwal’s missteps. The ascetic Yogi and the Magsaysay winner are as different as chalk and cheese. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has the reputation of being squeaky clean while Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was tainted-dented-and-painted with a brush of corruption.
This time, the denting and painting of Arvind Kejriwal started right from the word ‘go’ after Yogi Adityanath arrived in the national capital “via the Ghaziabad border” with the Yogi comparing Delhi’s roads and residential areas with those in Noida and Greater Noida, alleging that denizens of garbage-infested Delhi had been leaving Delhi to put up picket fences in the ‘larger NCR area’.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is slated to address a total of 14 rallies in Delhi, almost all of them in assembly segments where the ‘Purvanchali’ are in a majority, people who migrated and settled in Delhi from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the biggest single block of voters in Delhi, votes coveted by all the three major political parties, the BJP, the AAP and the supposed outlier, the Congress party of LoP in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi of the Bharat Jodo Yatra fame.
The BJP has no discernable ‘CM face’ though one gets the feeling that the ‘face’ keeps changing ‘face’ continuously. An impression that Parvesh Verma, the son of a former BJP Chief Minister of Delhi, is the BJP’s CM face has been doing the rounds. But the BJP is notoriously under the thumb of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. So nothing can be taken for granted. Modi always speaks first, and last. No BJP leader can voice an independent thought.
Not even Yogi Adityanath. Those who haven’t noticed, Bansuri Swaraj could be foisted as Chief Minister against all odds. Swaraj’s chubby looks and childish zeal is very much evident on the front row at all BJP rallies. Nothing and nobody can be ruled out in the Modi-dominated Bharatiya Janata Party. Prime Minister Narendra Modi loves to spring surprises on his party.
And Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has been convinced to acknowledge Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s greatness at every drop of the BJP hat. Party President overdue JP Nadda has been chaperoning Yogi Adityanath from rally to rally ever since the Yogi drove into Delhi, ensuring that every third sentence the Yogi utters is is replete with praise for Narendra Modi.
Yogi Adityanath is doing the talking and as far as AAP and Arvind Kejriwal is concerned, it is the Yogi who is a clear and a present danger. The Yogi has brought with him ‘Hindutva’, which is the current flavour of politics in the Hindi heartland, which includes Delhi as clearly as it played a role in the Haryana assembly elections.
The Yogi’s ‘Batenge toh katenge’ slogan was on stage at his first three rallies in Delhi, juxtaposed with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Ek hai toh safe hain’, which is a corruption of the original ‘Ek hai toh nek hain’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi casts a long shadow. Yogi Adityanath in his rallies stopped short of shouting ‘Batenge toh katenge’, aware that ‘Ek hai toh safe hain’ gets priority.
But the Yogi’s rallies are drawing massive turnouts and the rally grounds have been awash with ‘saffron’. The closing last two weeks of campaigning for the February 5 Delhi elections, starting from the rally in Kirari, will see the BJP closing in on its rivals with thick doses of ‘Hindutva’ laced with talk of the success of the ‘Mahakumbh’.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is setting the tone for the rest of the BJP’s Delhi campaign, playing into the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cohorts, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Union Health Minister JP Nadda, for whom ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas’ c/o Modi is the slogan of preference.
Yogi Adityanath has promised development, law & order and a corruption-free Delhi administration under the BJP. But Adityanath is known to play the Hindu card, a card which Prime Minister Narendra Modi studiously avoids to play because he has an image problem dogging him since the Gujarat riots of 2002.
The polluted Yamuna doesn’t stand a chance against the freebies galore. Handouts have pushed ‘Yamuna pradushan’ out of contention. The Delhi voter has been living with a polluted Yamuna and wouldn’t mind more pollution as long as he gets doles and handouts promised in the election manifestos.
Despite the three anti-incumbencies dogging AAP, the tainted, dented and painted Arvind Kejriwal is still acceptable to AAP supporters as long as there is free this and free that. Nothing that the BJP can roll out can shock and awe Kejriwal barring perhaps a monk Chief Minister. The thing to look out for is, what if Arvind Kejriwal, who is known to take no prisoners, accepts the Yogi’s dare and actually takes a dive in the Yamuna? (IPA Service)
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