BJP’s man for UP: Manoj Sinha. BJP stakes in the next round of elections are not very high and so the party will be consuming all its energies to focus on the mother of all elections in Uttar Pradesh early 2017. For the BJP winning the most populous and political state of the nation would negate all the downs it has suffered since it swept to power on an unprecedented mandate in 2014. Even then it achieved the impossible by claiming its total imprint on this vital northern state by winning 71 of the 80 seats leaving Mayawati’s BSP with a duck.
Early 2017 the BJP will be faced with three crucial elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand. The party president and grand strategist Amit Shah has along with RSS reps within the BJP have been working hard to nail a winning strategy in UP. One of the lessons learnt from the defeat in Delhi and Bihar is the lack of a CM-face and so the search for a candidate is on in all earnest. Looks like, the little-known Modi-Shah loyalist Manoj Sinha, for now, has an edge over the others.
BJP leaders in Delhi are of the opinion that they need a face to take on chief minister Akhilesh Yadav of the SP and the BSP chief Mayawati. The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party are the two main rivals the BJP has to contend with. Bihar is being cited to underline how the BJP suffered because it did not have a credible candidate to challenge Nitish Kumar.
Finding a leader popular across Uttar Pradesh is not looking easy. Big names such as Rajnath Singh, Kalraj Mishra and Kalyan Singh do not have youth on their side. The young faces do not ring a bell across all regions either. Among the names doing the rounds are those of Dharampal Singh, a backward Lodh leader and five-time MLA, and the junior railway minister MoS Manoj Sinha, an upper caste Bhumihar leader.
Manoj Sinha was to become the UP state party chief last month replacing Laxmikant Bajpayee whose term is over. But that has yet to happen.
A former ABVP activist, student body of the RSS, Manoj Sinha has been a three time MP from Ghazipur, a constituency that abuts Modi’s Varanasi. Sinha was very active in Varanasi during the 2014 general elections helping Shah and Modi. This relatively unknown 56-year-old has won the Lok Sabha elections in 1996 and 1999, and then his third term in the 2014 wave. Sinha is a Bhumihar, a caste with a negligible presence in UP, but which the BJP suggests to have kinship with Brahmins, who constitute 11 per cent of the population.
Originally a technocrat, Sinha’s political journey has been quite clean so far which could be one of the reasons for being picked. But it could also be part of Modi’s affinity in foisting little known loyalists in the top job much like he did with first-timers Fadnavis in Maharsahtra and Khattar in Haryana.
Sinha calls himself a chance politician. “I never thought of becoming a politician,” Sinha opens up to Current.
Contrary to his claim, Sinha was an active student leader and was president of ABVP, while pursuing his M.Tech degree in Civil Engineering from Banaras Hindu University (BHU).
He used to take lessons from the Guardian – the chaiwallah outside BHU, jokes a close friend, who did not want to be named. “We all used to sit at the tea shop and listen to our Guardian’s political speeches.” The students affectionately called him the Guardian because he always helped out students with money in a crunch.
Mention Guardian and even today Manoj Sinha is quick to acknowledge, “Yes, he was socialist and we did learn a lot from him.”
But he is cagey about his name being touted for CM candidate. “I do not get involved with such speculations. I only try to honestly perform duties allocated to me.”
After Narendra Modi took charge of the Prime Minister’s office, he gave due importance to UP and more than a dozen MPs got ministerial portfolios. But Sinha is the only minister who has something tangible to show to his people in UP by way of his latest railway budget.
The railway budget saw a 13 per cent hike for 2016-17, of which UP has cornered 42 percent. “Railway has always been with Bihar or West Bengal and therefore UP has been neglected,” Sinha states. “What I have done is to give the state its due share.”
UP received the lion’s share in this budget. If Gomti Nagar in Lucknow is going to be a model station in the country, Varanasi will soon start making dual engines run on diesel as well as electricity.
Known to be aggressive, however, Sinha keeps himself away from controversies. His name as CM candidate may not be such a surprise, as much as it is a matter of curiosity.
So what makes Sinha CM material?
One obvious reason is his clean image. To top this, he identifies with the image of a development-oriented leader and thus it runs tandem with Modi’s politics of development.
The third, which though may sound strange, is his not having a mass base. This makes him a safe candidate, posing no threat to Modi and his man Friday Amit Shah. A weak leader also gives the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) room to manipulate.
The other big reason for this little known politician to pip all his rivals seem to be the lack of a real credible leadership in the party in UP. Mass leaders such as Om Prakash Singh, Kalyan Singh, Vinay Katiyar, Surya Pratap Shahi have all been sidelined.
Even defectors like Jagdambika Pal and Babu Singh Kushwaha, who severed bonds with their parent organisations, the Congress and BSP respectively, have been unable to make space for themselves in the party. The senior leadership also did not nurture a second line of leadership.
Young leaders such as Varun Gandhi, who had the potential to be groomed for future, were snubbed when they tried to chart a course of their own. Such leaders become a threat to the senior leadership. Sinha does not fall in any of these categories. He is clean and seems harmless.
The question staring the party top brass is also to try and put an end to the acute factionalism that has come to characterise BJP’s internal politics in this politically important state. Hence the rabbit from the hat, maybe! Others in the race are Dharmpal Singh, Swatantra Dev Singh, Lucknow mayor Dinesh Sharma. While Sinha comes from the numerically small but influential Bhumihar caste, Dharmpal Singh comes from the Lodh caste, Swatanter Dev a Kurmi and Sharma a Brahmin. A few union ministers, too, were considered for the job, including the very controversial MP from Noida and tourism minister Mahesh Sharma. The outspoken HRD minister Smriti Irani’s name has also been doing the rounds but her chances could have taken a dive after her recent controversies.
But party workers in UP’s capital Lucknow are non-committal, “We are still waiting for the announcement of the party president in the state. No one is thinking of who could be the CM candidate.” But they do point out that the state president wearing the ultimate crown could be a possibility.
It has been over four months and the party leadership has still not been able to decide on its new face in UP. The party is trying to work out the caste equations to keep the OBC vote intact which helped it win the last Lok Sabha elections.
Dharmpal Singh, MLA from Aonla, and a Lodh, Rama Shankar Katheria, MP from Agra a Dalit Hindu, and Sanjeev Balyan, Jaat MP from Muzaffarnagar, are leaders who could work the caste politics in favour of BJP.
In a state ridden by caste, the BJP is also unsure whether to promote an upper caste or a backward face. The confusion has also held back the party from finalising its new state party chief despite Laxmikant Bajpayee’s term being over.
“We will strike a balance. If we have an upper caste state unit president, the chief ministerial face could be a backward. But we are finding it difficult to decide,” a central BJP leader claimed.
The BJP cannot hope to gain power without the support of the backwards, particularly non-Yadavs, given that Dalits have always backed Mayawati. But party managers worry that too much emphasis on backwards may annoy upper castes and divert them towards Mayawati.
The party seems extremely cautious because UP politics has seldom followed the tide at the Centre. In the last 2012 elections the party fared poorly, bagging just 47 seats in a house of over 400. What has added to the worries of the BJP is that UP elections, being considered as the run up to the 2019 general elections, cannot be seen to repeat the party’s drubbing in Delhi and in neighbouring Bihar.