BJP leaders jittery after sidelined Sanjay Joshi forays into UP politics

Lucknow: Anxiety prevails among senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh over the growing forays of senior party leader Sanjay Joshi into the state. Although Joshi is back into the party fold after being banished for years, he remains on the wrong side of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah for reasons that go back more than a decade. [caption id=“attachment_2242866” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Sidelined BJP leader Sanjay Joshi.[/caption] After the appearance of pro-Joshi posters in Kanpur, Lucknow, Ghaziabad and Delhi, it is the presence of a fairly large crowd at functions attended by Joshi that has sent alarm bells ringing in the party leadership. Joshi, a former BJP national general secretary, visited Lucknow on 10 May for a day, his second visit to the state capital in about one month. While on both occasions he refused to be drawn into making any controversial statement, it is learnt that several leaders and office bearers of the state BJP, who have been feeling sidelined, met him to update him on party affairs. However, state BJP president Laxmikant Bajpai was reported to have told the media in Ghaziabad that he was not aware of any BJP leader or worker having met Joshi. “Let me know if this is the case,” he reportedly said in reply to a question. Top BJP leaders are in Ghaziabad for the two-day state BJP executive meet on 11-12 May and Amit Shah also addressed the meet on Tuesday. On 10 May, he was in Lucknow ostensibly to address a seminar on Kranti Diwas to commemorate the 1857 war for independence and to pay tributes to martyrs. It was organized by Bharatiya Nagrik Parishad and Bharat Samriddhi, organisations that have been holding seminars and discussions of different subjects in Lucknow. In his April visit, he had participated in a community cleanliness programme. Both programmes, incidentally, drew a big gathering. While party leaders shy away from even taking Joshi’s name, and appear to brush aside his visits as being personal in nature and not connected with the party, there appears to be concern among them regarding his impact. Party men privately recall how disciplinary action was taken against BJP leaders who had extended birthday greetings to Joshi in Delhi on 6 April. These included MPs Manoj Tiwari and Ramesh Bidhuri, Ministers Sanjiv Balyan and Sarbanand Sonowal and Union Minister Shripad Naik’s private secretary Nitin Sardare. Joshi does not hold an official position in the party. He was a RSS worker in Maharashtra and had been sent to Gujarat in 1989 to join the BJP when Modi was  the Secretary of Gujarat state BJP. He shared a working relationship with Modi for some time, but later, it is said that his closeness with the then chief minister Keshubhai Patel forced Modi to remain out of Gujarat for years. Modi returned to Gujarat as chief minister in 2001, and then Joshi was shifted to Delhi as general secretary in charge of the organisation. However, Joshi was forced to resign in 2005 in the wake of the appearance of a CD with undesirable contents. It was later found to be a fake but Joshi remained sidelined for years. It was only in 2012 that the then BJP president Nitin Gadkari made him in-charge of UP assembly elections. Interestingly Modi did not campaign in UP in 2012 and also did not attend a party national executive meeting where Joshi was present. Since then, Joshi has remained sidelined, but his popularity has grown among party workers and supporters in UP and other states. He has an excellent rapport with many RSS leaders. This is said to be owing mainly to his easy accessibility, which is in contrast with the manner in which Amit Shah functions, who organised the party machinery prior to the Lok Sabha election. According to a BJP leader who was present in the house where Joshi was staying in Lucknow, “Several party leaders and cadres are feeling left out in the new set-up, and this is the reason why party workers and sympathizers gathered to welcome Joshi and listen to him during his visits.” According to a party leader, Joshi is more of an ideologue in true RSS character, but not much of a manager. Those present at the house where Joshi stayed said he did not make any comment against either Prime Minister Narendra Modi or the party president Amit Shah. He in fact said that it was Modi’s mass appeal that had led to the amazing performance by the BJP in last Lok Sabha election. However, he added that for the 2017 UP state election the BJP needed to work much harder than it did for the Lok Sabha. He is also reported to have said that party leaders must strengthen contacts at the grassroots level to improve the party’s chances in 2017. While state BJP office-bearers avoid making any comment, many RSS leaders from Lucknow are known to be in communication with Joshi on a regular basis. With the 2017 UP election being extremely important for the BJP as well as for Modi, some RSS functionaries are said to be toying with the idea of a new role for Joshi, especially if the BJP fails to do well in Bihar assembly election later this year.