Hardliner Yogi Adityanath, who was in charge of the Bharatiya Janata Party's campaign in the recent by-polls in Uttar Pradesh, has lost his sheen in the wake of the saffron outfit's electoral debacle. Ironically, the Samajwadi Party, the party principally responsible for his defeating him, has renewed its interest in Adityanath and his home constituency, Gorakhpur.



Late on September 13, the day by-polls took place, the Yogi’s guru, Avaidyanath, died in a Gorakhpur hospital. Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav was among the first to send a condolence message, saying that Avaidyanath had always worked for the welfare of society “without discrimination between castes and creeds”. At Mulayam’s instruction, local Samajwadi Party leaders participated in Avaidyanath's last rites of the deceased on September 14, and during the bhandara (community feast) in his memory at Gorakshapeeth temple on September 24.



Battle over AIIMS



The poor results in the by-elections are not the only reason Yogi Adityanath has fallen from favour for the party’s central leadership. During his Lok Sabha campaign in Gorakhpur, Adityanath had promised to bring a branch of the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences to the city. It now emerges that Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency, is the preferred venue for institution. Adityanath has tried to meet Modi to discuss the matter, but has not been given time.



Mulayam, never one to miss a trick, has begun to cosy up to Adityanath. The day the by-poll results were announced on September 16, Mulayam’s daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav, who works for an NGO, visited Gorakhpur and declared that she would “write to the Prime Minister on behalf of my organisation to approve AIIMS in the city”. During the visit, Aparna, who is married to Mulayam’s son Prateek, also met Adityanath and offered her condolences on the death of his guru.



“Mulayam is trying to play politics at a time when Yogiji is facing a crisis,” said a BJP member of Parliament who is close to Adiyanath. “But I am confident that the Prime Minister will understand this and let the AIIMS be set up in Gorakhpur.”



Star fails to shine



Yogi Adityanath was brought into the national limelight by Amit Shah, who chose him to run the Uttar Pradesh campaign for this month's by-polls. He was also positioned as a Thakur alternative to the party’s long-term star in UP, Rajnath Singh.



In the run-up to the by-polls, while Adityanath was busy trying to polarise the electorate by spreading fear about so-called love jihad, Rajnath, aware of the attempt being made to dethrone him, punctured the party’s position with one simple prick. A day before polling, Rajnath Singh was asked about the matter while addressing a press conference in Delhi. “What is love jihad?” he replied with a smile.



Adityanath attributes the BJP’s electoral reverses to the fact that “he was not allowed to campaign everywhere in the state”. But the party already appears desperate to disassociate itself from the polarising ideology that Adityanath represents.



Leave it to the Bajrang Dal



A week after the by-poll results, senior BJP leader Shiv Prakash, who is a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh spokesman, asked partymen to refrain from speaking about love jihad in public, saying organisations like Bajrang Dal would deal with such issues.



“The BJP is a political party, and then there are other sister organisations,” Prakash said at a party meeting at Agra on September 22. “We will have to see which organisation should raise what topic. There are no two thoughts across the party and other affiliated organisations on the issue of love jihad, but, tell me, should it be an agenda of the political party or the Bajrang Dal?”



At the same time, the party decided not to hold a Hindu Mahapanchayat it had called for September 28 at Faizabad.



Yet the question being asked in BJP circles is, will Adityanath, whose ambitions have pole-vaulted in the last few weeks, accept this marginalisation? Activists of Hindu Yuva Vahini, a rabid pro-Hindutva outfit headed by Adityanath, have already started raising a slogan: Desh mein Modi, Pradesh mein Yogi.



