Taliban, ‘Abbajaan’ & Ram Temple: Yogi Adityanath, BJP Set Tone for Campaign Against Main Challenger SP for 2022

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the BJP are setting the tone for the upcoming elections broadly on three major themes to counter its main challenger in the Samajwadi Party. These are raising the issue of national security and regressiveness over the Taliban, highlighting Muslim appeasement on various fronts through the campaign around ‘Abbajaan’, and attempting Hindu consolidation through the issue of the Ram Temple.

Adityanath, in his recent speeches — including one in Kushinagar on Sunday — has repeatedly referred to these issues.

“Would people who support the Taliban had ever allowed for a law against the Triple Talaq to come?” the CM asked. This was on the cue of Samajwadi Party MP Shafiqur Rahman Barq recently equating the Taliban coming to power in Afghanistan to India’s freedom struggle, for which he was booked by the police for sedition. “We are trying to highlight that the Samajwadi Party stands for such a regressive mindset as the Taliban,” a senior UP BJP leader said on the narrative being weaved.

“Bichhu kahin bhi hoga toh dasega hi (A scorpion will always be dangerous, wherever it is),” the CM said, in an attempt to draw an equivalence.

The Ram Temple is also a major poll issue with the CM repeatedly referring to the ongoing construction in Ayodhya and stressing that it is only the BJP which would have done this.

“Would people who opened fire on Ram Sevaks build the Ram Temple?” the CM said on Sunday, also taking veiled digs at Akhilesh Yadav for calling himself a devotee of Lord Ram and Krishna now. Adityanath in his recent speeches has repeatedly said that leaders like Akhilesh Yadav earlier did not visit temples in fear of offending their Muslim vote-bank. BJP is also trying to subtly impress upon people that the pace of the ongoing construction of the Ram Temple would suffer under any other government in Uttar Pradesh.

BJP state chief Swatantra Dev Singh on Sunday also said that if it is communal to build the Ram Temple, he has no issue being called communal. “Congress rejected the existence of Lord Ram. SP had fired at Ram Sewaks,” Singh said.

A host of other issues have meanwhile been combined by the BJP under the adage of ‘Abbajaan’ to target the purported Muslim appeasement by the Samajwadi Party. The CM on Sunday said those who say ‘Abbajaan’ used to devour the free ration sent for the poor and cornered government jobs meant for the poor by indulging in corruption. The CM has also highlighted that the SP government tried to drop cases against terrorists backed by Pakistan who committed terror acts in Uttar Pradesh, but the court had to intervene to stop government from doing so.

Adityanath in the state assembly earlier had also targeted Akhilesh Yadav saying why he had a problem when his father Mulayam Singh Yadav was referred to as Abbajaan, since the party believed in Muslim appeasement. The targets on SP on this count have also increased since Mukhtar’s Ansari’s eldest brother Sabatuddin Ansari joined the SP last week in the presence of Akhilesh Yadav.

The BJP is already making this a major issue, saying gangsters like Mukhtar Ansari and his family are now being backed by the SP in a threat to law and order while BJP government came down heavily against them by putting likes of Mukhtar Ansari and Atiq Ahmed behind bars and razing down their properties.

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