The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is using the celebrations to mark its two years in power at the Centre to draw the battle lines in bellwether Uttar Pradesh, India's largest and most politically fractured state that is scheduled to have elections in 2017.
Lion's Share
UP has got the lion's share of the 198 "Vikas Parv" events planned by the party across the country amid speculation that the crucial polls could be advanced to December 2016 as the BJP and the state's ruling Samajwadi Party are not keen to give the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party much time to mobilise voters.
While the state's political cauldron has been on the boil since two senior police officers were killed this month in clashes with an armed sect squatting on a piece of land and questions about crumbling law and order have taken centre stage, the BJP has meticulously planned the events and picked the places to benefit from a mix of polarisation and its pro-development image.
The party is eager to carry forward the political momentum from last month's historic win in Assam to Uttar Pradesh, a state that it has ruled four times but none of its chief ministers completed a full five-year term.
The BJP will present its two-year report card with a litany of achievements in nearly 30 major towns and cities, according to a party document accessed by Mail Today. A team of three-one senior minister assisted by a junior minister and a party functionary - will manage each such event, a template that will be followed across India.
The party has chosen just half a dozen towns in eastern UP, including the Prime Minister's constituency of Varanasi, apart from Mau, Raebareli, Mirzapur, Jaunpur and Gorakhpur.
"Vikas Parv"
In contrast, the BJP has planned "Vikas Parv" celebrations at a slew of towns and cities in the western and central parts of the state, particularly in regions with a sizeable Muslim population and areas that have been centres of communal conflagrations in recent times, such as Muzaffarnagar, Moradabad, Rampur and Sambhal.
The last two, for instance, have an over 70 percent Muslim population.
Another striking facet of the celebrations is that no UP based face of the party, including Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, has been used for taking its message across the state.
Party chief Amit Shah spoke to booth-level workers on Tuesday at Kasganj, again in the western part of the state. Though he maintained that the Ram Temple issue has been central to the BJP's manifesto, he said it will not be used as a rallying point in the assembly elections. The agenda of the polls will be development, Shah emphasised.
According to political observers, while the party does not want to rake up the issue overtly to avoid sounding divisive, it wants to somehow keep it simmering in the minds of the voters and reap the benefits of its pro-Hindutva image.
High Hopes
Shah said the BJP would get two-thirds majority in the UP polls, while hitting out at the ruling SP. "We are presenting a report card of two years of the NDA government, but Akhilesh babu (the chief minister), you should also tell the people what your government did in four years," he told his party workers.
He also took a dig at the SP over the Mathura violence. "This government is neither taking power to villages nor employment to youths, leave aside giving farmers the benefit of our PM's insurance scheme for them. So what are they doing? They are helping SP workers encroach on the state's land every day."
He said the UP BJP would launch a website where anyone would be able to report such instances of land grabbing.
"We will wage a mass movement against it," Shah vowed. The BJP chief alleged that in the 10 years of UPA, which was supported by the SP and BSP, scams worth Rs 12 lakh crore took place.
"They left no place, whether it's the sky, earth or beneath the surface, where corruption did not take place," he said. "There is not a single allegation of corruption against the present regime."
Lion's Share
UP has got the lion's share of the 198 "Vikas Parv" events planned by the party across the country amid speculation that the crucial polls could be advanced to December 2016 as the BJP and the state's ruling Samajwadi Party are not keen to give the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party much time to mobilise voters.
While the state's political cauldron has been on the boil since two senior police officers were killed this month in clashes with an armed sect squatting on a piece of land and questions about crumbling law and order have taken centre stage, the BJP has meticulously planned the events and picked the places to benefit from a mix of polarisation and its pro-development image.
The party is eager to carry forward the political momentum from last month's historic win in Assam to Uttar Pradesh, a state that it has ruled four times but none of its chief ministers completed a full five-year term.
The BJP will present its two-year report card with a litany of achievements in nearly 30 major towns and cities, according to a party document accessed by Mail Today. A team of three-one senior minister assisted by a junior minister and a party functionary - will manage each such event, a template that will be followed across India.
The party has chosen just half a dozen towns in eastern UP, including the Prime Minister's constituency of Varanasi, apart from Mau, Raebareli, Mirzapur, Jaunpur and Gorakhpur.
"Vikas Parv"
In contrast, the BJP has planned "Vikas Parv" celebrations at a slew of towns and cities in the western and central parts of the state, particularly in regions with a sizeable Muslim population and areas that have been centres of communal conflagrations in recent times, such as Muzaffarnagar, Moradabad, Rampur and Sambhal.
The last two, for instance, have an over 70 percent Muslim population.
Another striking facet of the celebrations is that no UP based face of the party, including Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, has been used for taking its message across the state.
Party chief Amit Shah spoke to booth-level workers on Tuesday at Kasganj, again in the western part of the state. Though he maintained that the Ram Temple issue has been central to the BJP's manifesto, he said it will not be used as a rallying point in the assembly elections. The agenda of the polls will be development, Shah emphasised.
According to political observers, while the party does not want to rake up the issue overtly to avoid sounding divisive, it wants to somehow keep it simmering in the minds of the voters and reap the benefits of its pro-Hindutva image.
High Hopes
Shah said the BJP would get two-thirds majority in the UP polls, while hitting out at the ruling SP. "We are presenting a report card of two years of the NDA government, but Akhilesh babu (the chief minister), you should also tell the people what your government did in four years," he told his party workers.
He also took a dig at the SP over the Mathura violence. "This government is neither taking power to villages nor employment to youths, leave aside giving farmers the benefit of our PM's insurance scheme for them. So what are they doing? They are helping SP workers encroach on the state's land every day."
He said the UP BJP would launch a website where anyone would be able to report such instances of land grabbing.
"We will wage a mass movement against it," Shah vowed. The BJP chief alleged that in the 10 years of UPA, which was supported by the SP and BSP, scams worth Rs 12 lakh crore took place.
"They left no place, whether it's the sky, earth or beneath the surface, where corruption did not take place," he said. "There is not a single allegation of corruption against the present regime."