NEW DELHI: The BJP leadership has asked party members to “restrain” themselves from communalizing the Dadri lynching and warned that it was derailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agenda of development for all sections of society, especially at a time when the party is going all out to win the Bihar elections.

With Union ministers, MPs and MLAs holding forth on cow slaughter and beef eating since the incident on September 28, BJP has told its leaders to focus on the Akhilesh Yadav government’s failure to maintain law and order in Uttar Pradesh.

“As BJP workers big or small, we need to maintain restraint and have no right to derail the PM’s agenda of good governance and development, which includes sabka saath, sabka vikas (with all, development for all). Even the slightest action from our end which can lead to some other perception should be avoided,” BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh said.

BJP sources said culture minister Mahesh Sharma was asked to pipe down and he has not spoken after that. Party MLA Sangeet Som was warned against getting into the communally volatile issue but he could not hold himself back, after which he was hauled up.

Even before BJP recovered from Som’s utterances, another central minister and UP MP Sanjeev Balyan came out saying the lynching was a “spontaneous” reaction. After a dressing down by the party, Balyan gave an interview the next day saying he was talking about cow slaughter in general.

But matters did not end there as religious leaders who represent BJP in Parliament – Sakshi Maharaj and Yogi Adityanath -- jumped onto the bandwagon. Sources admitted that these “swamis” were beyond the party’s control and they could not be hauled up, reflecting BJP’s compulsion to keep the saffron flavour alive to appease its core Hindutva vote.

Senior BJP leaders who hail from UP – Om Mathur, Shiv Prasad and Ramlal – have been talking to party leaders in UP and at the Centre on how to manage the situation. Sources also blamed state BJP chief Laxmi Kant Vajpayee for not being able to control state party leaders.

