NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Sunday kick-start the ruling BJP’s Lok Sabha election campaign in the bellwether state of Uttar Pradesh with a rally in Meerut, where the party has fielded actor Arun Govil, famous for playing Lord Rama in Ramanand Sagar’s “Ramayan”, telecast on Doordarshan in the late 1980s.
The PM’s choice of western Uttar Pradesh to launch the canvassing in the state is significant as the BJP’s 2019 Lok Sabha performance in this key belt was not as per the party’s expectations.
While saffron forces had swept all of nearly 16 Lok Sabha seats in western UP in 2014, in 2019, this tally dropped to nine with the BSP and the SP making inroads and a formidable BSP-SP-RLD combine denting the BJP here by slicing away Muslim votes and part of the SC, Jat and OBC votes.
In the 2019 LS poll, the BJP had won 62 of UP’s 80 seats, the BSP 10 and the SP five. In 2014, the BJP had won 71 seats in UP.
This season, a formidable UP win is a must for the BJP’s ambitious 370 plus seat target in a House of 543 MPs and the party believes new alliance equations will boost its tally in Uttar Pradesh, which sends the maximum MPs to the Lok Sabha.
In the upcoming poll, the BSP is fighting alone, the RLD is in the NDA fold and the SP is battling rebellion over ticket distribution in the region.
The PM’s choice of Meerut as the rally venue for the UP campaign launch is also nuanced. This segment falls in western UP that will mostly poll in the first two phases and will establish trends in favour or against contesting parties.
The Prime Minister’s rally will come just a day after President Droupadi Murmu conferred India’s highest civilian honour Bharat Ratna on late Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh.
Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Chaudhary received the award on Saturday on the behalf of the late Jat legend who was born in a peasant family in Noorpur village of Meerut, the city where the PM will sound the UP poll bugle of the BJP on Sunday.
Importantly, Chaudhary Charan Singh, whose legacy still inspires the peasantry and the Jat population across western UP, was elected for the first time to the Legislative Assembly of the United Province (Uttar Pradesh) from the Ghaziabad-Baghpat constituency in Meerut district in 1937.
When the PM addresses the rally on Sunday, Jayant Chaudhary will be by his side, making a political statement of solidarity to the dominant Jats of western Uttar Pradesh.
The PM’s rally will seek to boost saffron prospects across the belt where the party had not done too well in the 2022 UP elections despite an overall impressive performance elsewhere.
In the Jat belt of west UP in 2022, the BJP won 77 of the 113 seats as against 99 in 2017.
The BJP’s principal rivals in 2022 — the SP and the RLD — riding the farmer agitation wave, together won 36 of these 113 segments as against 18 in 2017. The RLD in 2022 bagged eight of these 36 seats, regaining a part of its lost base in the region. In 2017, the RLD had only one MLA in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly.
But in 2022, Jats consolidated behind Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Chaudhary, who is now in the BJP fold.
Meerut, which the BJP holds in the outgoing Lok Sabha, goes to the polls in the second phase on April 26. The PM’s presence here is expected to impact the electorate in adjoining segments like Amroha (where former BSP leader Danish Ali is the sitting MP), Moradabad (which the SP’s ST Hassan holds); and Ghaziabad where the BJP has dropped Union Minister and sitting MP VK Singh to address anti-incumbency this year. A majority of western UP’s LS seats will poll in the first two phases on April 19 and 26.