DPPs: Historic victory for BJP in UP

Prabhat Ranjan Deen
BJP has registered a historic victory in the election of District Panchayat President. From Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Home Minister Amit Shah and all senior party leaders are happy with this victory. Yogi is busy building his political future.
In the recently held Panchayat elections in Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party had won 790 seats, while BJP had won only 599 seats, but by winning 67 out of 75 seats of District Panchayat President election, the Bharatiya Janata Party has surprised all the political parties and the media as well. In the election of District Panchayat President, the Samajwadi Party had to be satisfied with just five seats. Most of the elected panchayat members of all other parties including Samajwadi Party cast their vote in favor of BJP in the District Panchayat President’s election. This strategy of BJP has kept all other political parties in trouble.
In the month of May, when the results of Panchayat elections came, the media was calling it a semi-final match before the assembly elections and forecasted that the political future of the Yogi led BJP government was in danger. In the district panchayats elections, 790 candidates of SP had won, while 599 candidates of BJP got victory. Independents and other parties together won 1247 seats. In this, BSP got 361 seats and Congress got 59 seats. The BJP had to face defeat in Ayodhya, Varanasi, Mathura and Prayagraj. The BJP was also badly defeated in the capital Lucknow and its neighboring district Barabanki. In Gorakhpur, the home constituency of UP CM Yogi Adityanath, there was a tough fight between the SP and the BJP, where SP won 20 out of 68 seats and BJP won 20 seats. In Deoria, Mirzapur, Chandauli, Etawah, Kasganj, Firozabad, Rampur, Mainpuri and Azamgarh, the SP had dominantly won the panchayat elections.
How the Samajwadi Party, which defeated the BJP in the Panchayat elections, was reduced to just five seats in the District Panchayat President’s election, has become a matter of deep churning not only for the Samajwadi Party but for all other parties. The BJP has also won the seat of District Panchayat President in Sonia Gandhi’s parliamentary constituency Raebareli and SP’s bastion Mainpuri. For the first time in the election of District Panchayat President, BJP has won 67 districts. The media, which has described the Panchayat elections as the semi-final match before the assembly elections, is now unable to understand what to call the election of the District Panchayat president. Out of 67, 21 District Panchayat presidents were already elected unopposed. The Bharatiya Janata Party won 53 posts in the proper election held on Saturday the 3rd of July 2021. On this historic victory of BJP, CM Yogi Adityanath has congratulated the candidates and workers. Yogi said this victory is a big achievement for the party. BJP state president Swatantra Dev Singh has even said that this victory of BJP is the victory of 2022. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also congratulated the party for its excellent performance in the Uttar Pradesh district panchayat elections. Apart from this, he has given the credit of winning to Yogi Adityanath. PM Modi tweeted and said that BJP’s spectacular victory in the UP district panchayat elections is the blessings given by the public for development, public service and rule of law. The credit for this goes to the policies of Chief Minister Yogi ji and the tireless hard work of the party workers. Union Home Minister Amit Shah congratulated the party workers for the excellent performance of the BJP in UP and said that the BJP government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will continue to set new standards of progress by fulfilling the aspirations of the underprivileged sections of the state.
You may recollect merely a fortnight ago, the wind of change of power in UP was blowing in the newspapers and channels in Uttar Pradesh. It was not the real wind… it was the virtual wind, which was blown by the media itself. Yogi is going… Yogi’s wings are to be cut off… Yogi’s time is over… Arvind Kumar Sharma, who became MLC in UP after relinquishing the post of bureaucrat, is going to be Deputy Chief Minister of UP… etcetera etcetera. This news was randomly published in the newspapers and shown on the channels. On the same subject, debates were being run on all the TV channels. But what happened ultimately? The media got the same setback as it has just faced again in the election of District Panchayat President.
First the drums were played that there would be a change of power, and after a few days when it was officially denied, then there was another drumming started. A week ago, the media did not like Yogi’s face, and within a week or so, Yogi’s face became most favorite-face again. The journalists did not do a little review of the threads that how Arvind Kumar Sharma be equaled to Yogi or how would he be made the face of the 2022 assembly elections? A bureaucrat of Gujarat cadre who has devoted his entire service to Modi-Service, how the Bharatiya Janata Party will make him the political face of a sensitive political state like UP, it was not analysed by the media..!
During the media-wave of change of power in the state, a senior official of the RSS said that the media has been given a football to play… and thus they are playing. The RSS leader said that the media was engaged in counting the failure of governance and administration in handling Corona… now the same people are engaged in toppling Yogi’s Government… and the same people will be engaged in praising Yogi again… and this is what happened after all.
The high flying kite of Arvind Kumar Sharma, was cut to size by the BJP High Command by making him the vice-president of the state BJP. The BJP leadership made Sharma stand in the group of 18 other vice-presidents and told the media his actual position. But the media was not ashamed. It was also argued in some parts of the media that Yogi went to Delhi and created a ruckus there and took the high command under his influence. Think how you can resort to such arguments..! If Modi and Shah take a decision, then who has the guts to say no..! The only issue was to divert the media from corona failure to meaningless debate of change of power in UP, and the BJP high command was successful in doing this.
Now see, when BJP made Sharma the vice-president of the state organization, no media organization raised any question on the decision. The media did not bother to raise a finger on the wrong and sloppy decisions on the name of reshaping state organization. State BJP appointed some such state spokespersons, who have been fierce opponents and critics of BJP. State BJP President Swatantradev Singh has his caste priority on top. What effect will his love of caste affect the party, it has got no meaning to Swatantradev. The equation should be fine with both Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and general secretary Sunil Bansal, then who will do what..?
However, after the historic victory in the election of the District Panchayat President, political activity will definitely intensify in UP. The massive victory of the BJP in the election of the District Panchayat President has forced the strategists of the opposition parties to turn their heads in a new way for the 2022 assembly elections. For the BJP, this victory is going to act as a placard in the assembly elections, as well as efforts will be made to capitalize it in the Uttarakhand and Punjab assembly elections and finally in the Gujarat assembly elections. After this victory, the open displeasure of some leaders and workers of the state BJP also got shattered. Recently the Deputy Chief Minister of the state Keshav Prasad Maurya had announced that the party would fight and win the elections under the leadership of Yogi.