The BJP’s perceived vulnerability in Uttar Pradesh has prompted an all-hands-on-board approach ahead of the 2027 assembly polls, with hatchets being buried and personae non gratae rehabilitated. The revamped party organisation has the maximum representation from UP; ace organiser and election manager Vinod Tawde has taken the reins of the campaign, and the re-‘RSS-isation’ of the BJP appears to be in process.

RSS Role In BJP’s UP Success

The perception that the RSS engine had powered the BJP to four consecutive electoral wins in UP is reflected in the phrase ‘RSS-isation of the BJP’, coined by political anthropologist Shashank Chaturvedi. He attributed the BJP’s spectacular success in UP to close coordination between the party and the mothership from 2014 onwards. Sunil Bansal, an RSS pracharak deputed as organising secretary of the BJP’s UP wing, was hailed as the architect of the BJP’s electoral strategy. The ‘sangathan shilpi’ pracharak joined the impressive list of RSS-trained political organisers who built (and rapidly expanded) the party’s base across north, west, and east India from the late 1980s.

Post the 2022 assembly elections, a rash of media reports pointed to a rift between UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Bansal, who was said to be ‘close’ to Union home minister Amit Shah. Bansal was duly shifted to Delhi and went on to pull off a spectacular coup in West Bengal. But the dissonance between the party’s central leadership and the charismatic UP CM persisted. The double whammy of........

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