Farmer leaders plan for UP, spell more trouble for Yogi Adityanath

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 13

Enthused with the outcome of the West Bengal Assembly and Uttar Pradesh panchayat polls, farmer leaders are now planning to pitch their fight against the three central farm laws to take on BJP’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who faces his biggest test next year.  

As Adityanath struggles against a barrage of negative perceptions amid the raging corona pandemic—lack of health facilities, oxygen shortage, and bodies floating in rivers—ahead of the 2022 polls, senior BKU leaders from UP say “it is obvious” that the ramifications of the agitation will be felt in their home state and neighbouring Uttarakhand which too has a BJP government.        

Senior BKU leader Yudhvir Singh said given the situation in the state, the leadership has asked supporters to stay at home and safe. “Otherwise, it barely takes three-four hours to collect supporters, but we don’t want to do that. It is obvious that if the government does not agree to our demands over the three farm laws and the MSP and the agitation stretches further, the effect will be seen both in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand elections.

“The Samyukta Kisan Morcha has not yet formally discussed the issue but UP is BKU’s home state and it is obvious the rural population will show their anger against those responsible for the three laws and the complete mishandling situation of the Covid situation,” he said.

The results of the Zila Panchayat elections are being seen as a barometer of the public mood in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the Assembly elections. The Samajwadi Party emerging at the top, followed by the BJP and the BSP has thrown opened exciting new possibilities of electoral combinations in the key state that goes to polls next year.

In these elections, the RLD, which lost its supremo Ajit Singh to Covid recently, contested with the SP. Notably at the first ‘mahapanchayat’ in the region in January this year, BKU president Naresh Tikait admitted that it was “their mistake” to support BJP candidate, Union Minister Sanjiv Balyan, against RLD chief Ajit Singh in the last Lok Sabha elections. In the circumstances, it will be interesting to see which way rural population swings in Assembly elections, especially in the Western UP considered to be the domain of the RLD.  

The RLD had been relegated to the sidelines after the Muzaffarnagar riots.

Meanwhile, the AAP too managed to do well for itself in the rural bodies’ elections.                     

Observers say the panchayat elections were “the precursor to political mobilisation in poll-bound UP among ticket seekers of legislative assembly and leaders at the grassroots level and an indication of the public mood. Dissatisfaction against Yogi Adityanath Government on various fronts is out in open”.

While worried BJP leaders claim that due to the Corona pandemic many of their workers and leaders could not campaign effectively. setbacks in Ayodhya, Varanasi, and Mathura, the key centres of its Hindutva politics indicate that the saffron party needs a better strategy and ideas than the traditional planks in all parts — central, eastern, and western UP.

The observers say results from eastern and central parts indicate “dissatisfaction against the BJP” beyond western UP, which has been among the hot spots of ongoing farmers’ agitation against the three central farm laws.

Apart from the permanent protest site led by BKU’s Rakesh Tikait at Ghazipur, the region witnessed a series of ‘mahapanchayats’ supported by rural communities across the board, including Muslims, and non-farm castes.