BJP president Nitin Nabin on Saturday made it clear that the party would be counting on Ram and Krishna — its time-tested poll winners — to sail through the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections next year.
Nabin arrived in Lucknow on a two-day visit, during which he is expected to hold a series of meetings with senior leaders to streamline the party’s strategy for the Assembly polls and “guide the newly formed team of the state BJP”.
“I bow before the land of Lord Ram and Lord Krishna. The way the BJP workers have welcomed me here clearly indicates that we are set to form our double-engine government in Uttar Pradesh for the third consecutive term. My two-day tour will further strengthen this belief,” Nabin told reporters during a 12km roadshow from the airport in Lucknow to the BJP’s state headquarters.
His visit comes amid the controversy over the Ayodhya Ram temple donation embezzlement, which the Opposition has leveraged to corner the BJP. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath, state BJP chief Pankaj Chaudhary, deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, and other state ministers received Nabin at the airport.
Groups of people holding banners of Gautam Samaj, Yadav Samaj, Kushwaha Samaj and Punjabi Samaj garlanded Nabin while chanting slogans about their communities’ loyalty to the BJP.
Later, Nabin held a meeting with the BJP’s state-level office-bearers and was quoted as saying that religion was the party’s most important poll plank.
“He said we have to remind the people what we have done in Ayodhya and Varanasi and promise the same in Mathura. With Modi as our mascot and Hindutva as our core ideology, we have to do aggressive campaigning for 2027," a BJP functionary quoted Nabin as saying. Nabin will meet the district-level leaders on Sunday.
A section of Hindus claims that the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi was built at the direction of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb after demolishing a portion of the Kashi Vishwanath temple. Several cases are pending in Allahabad High Court and the Varanasi court with regard to the claim.
The government has undertaken road-widening and beautification projects around the Kashi Vishwanath temple even though longstanding title and origin claims are pending in courts.
Minutes before the arrival of the BJP chief, some Vishwa Hindu Parishad sadhus held a meeting in Mathura and announced karseva (voluntary service) on August 9 to build a temple at the birthplace of Krishna in the city.
Swami Sachchidanand, known for his proximity to the BJP, told the media in Mathura: “We are going to start a movement in Mathura to bring down the dome of Shahi Idgah and build a Krishna temple on August 9.”
The RSS, BJP and VHP claim that the Idgah was built by Aurangzeb after demolishing a portion of a temple where Krishna was born. Currently, Krishna Janmasthan Mandir and Shahi Idgah stand next to each other, separated by a common wall.
“The right time has arrived to launch a successful karseva to remove the mosque and take over the entire area for the temple. We have carefully chosen the day because it was on this day in 1942 that Mahatma Gandhi had given the slogan of ‘Do or Die’ against British rule,” Sachchidanand said.
The karseva proposal is reminiscent of the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign spearheaded by the VHP in the 1980s, which later became the driving force behind the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, and the construction of the Ram temple.
Two days ago, Adityanath had called on Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav to speak for the Mathura temple instead of raising the Ayodhya theft case. “He wants to take (political) mileage out of Ayodhya, but if he is honest, he must talk about the Krishna temple in Mathura,” he had said.
Dwijendra Tripathi, a Congress leader of Uttar Pradesh, said: “They (the BJP) have not done any substantial work based on which they can seek votes in the 2027 elections."