Opinion | Caste Will Be The Sole Big Weapon Against Yogi Adityanath In UP Elections

Yogi can’t ignore caste. But as the monk who leads India’s most populous state, he must also transcend it.

In Uttar Pradesh, development fills out wounds festering for decades, but caste still cuts deep.

For Akhilesh Yadav’s SP and Rahul Gandhi’s Congress, caste will not just be a tool. It will be the main weapon against Yogi Adityanath’s BJP in the state. They know that the chief minister is arguably the second most popular leader in the party after PM Narendra Modi.

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They can’t escape headlines about UP’s new roads, airports, tourism circuits, investments, growing GSDP, and overall development, which has pulled the state out of the BIMARU morass. UP now has India’s third-highest GSDP at Rs 29.7 lakh crore and tops infrastructure spending with Rs 5.31 lakh crore.

But most importantly, they know that Yogi Adityanath’s immense Hindutva appeal blurs caste lines and can render traditional election arithmetic inconsequential. That, for them, is the most dangerous and despairing part.

Without diluting the colour of saffron and bringing in the hues of caste, it is nearly impossible to take on a monk who has taken apart a rusty Fiat-of-a-state and is rebuilding it as a Ferrari.

And that makes it inevitable that they will paint Yogi’s government as upper-caste, Thakur-dominated,........

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