Aurobindo Ghose

With four phases of election in UP over upto 26 th Feb for 262 seats and three phases remaining for 141 seats in 25 districts from 27th Feb to 5th March, the BJP strategy is undergoing a drastic change. BJP was claiming to be winning 175 of the 262 seats in the first four phases, but the RSS ground report says it can win only 75 seats with difficulty. So now the BJP has decided to hand over the task of motivating and mobilizing their voters upto the election booth to the RSS volunteers. They also plan to organize many more rallies to be addressed by PM Modi and MP Swami Adityanath.

Five questions arise. Does delegating by the party such electoral tasks as motivating and mobilising voters to a religio-cultural organisation as the RSS , tantamount to violation of the model code of conduct and as spelled out by the Supreme Court recently? Secondly, is Swami Adityanath going to be BJP's CM face in UP ? If so, will this move intnesify the dissensions and inner party struggles within the BJP during these last phases?

Fourthly, even after so much organisational and strategic changes, can the BJP hope to achieve a more than fifty percent strike rate in the last three phases and win 75 of the 141 seats left, to get somewhere near a respectable total of 150 seats ?

Desperate situations may require desperate measures. But can the impossible be achieved by the BJP and RSS combined, in the next seven days of election left ?

The very fact that such a critical inside story of RSS assessment has leaked to the Press shows that the party is riven by indiscipline and disunity of unimaginable magnitude, as reflected in its poor organisational performance. Let the people of UP decide.

Hastakshep