InDepth | Uttar Pradesh Politics: Why BJP Is Focusing on Grassroots Revival

As the popular saying in political circles goes, the route to Delhi is through Uttar Pradesh (UP). In 2024, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was seeking a supermajority in the Lok Sabha, but when the results were declared, the party lost 29 seats in UP. Its tally in UP fell sharply from 62 to 33 seats. Due to internal differences with the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) cadres were not actively at work at the grassroots level in UP that election season. That is a shock the BJP does not want to repeat. Keeping the lessons from 2024 in mind, a key coordination meeting of RSS frontal organisations was held in Ghaziabad on June 30, focusing on election planning, campaign strategy and the role of Sangh affiliates in expanding the BJP’s grassroots presence. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, BJP state president Pankaj Chaudhary and state organisation secretary Dharampal Singh were part of the discussions.

According to sources, the Sangh Parivar wants government welfare schemes to reach every beneficiary in UP before the election. Groups affiliated with the RSS, including labour bodies, are expected to be mobilised to strengthen outreach. The belief within the organisation is that being in power gives the BJP an advantage in taking its message directly to voters.

Candidate selection is also being discussed. At the Ghaziabad meet, it was mentioned that feedback is reportedly being collected on sitting MLAs and ministers, with performance, local anti-incumbency and caste equations all under review. Sources indicate that between 25 and 40 per cent of incumbent legislators could be denied tickets if required. The broad strategy is to fight the election under CM Adityanath’s leadership while addressing dissatisfaction at the constituency level through candidate changes. Ticket distribution is expected to be based on several key criteria, including an MLA’s activity in the constituency, their acceptability among the public and within the party organisation, implementation of government welfare schemes, prevailing caste and social dynamics, feedback from the local party organisation and the candidate’s ability to defeat the Opposition. Leaders also discussed recurring concerns over examination-paper leaks and the need to prevent them from becoming a larger political issue. Several names were proposed for the post of Uttar Pradesh in-charge, including Vinod Tawde. One proposal was to appoint a senior Union cabinet minister as the election in-charge.

During the RSS’ all-India pranth pracharak (state in-charge) meeting held in Belagavi, Karnataka from July 10-12, where the top leadership, including chief Mohan Bhagwat and general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale were present, the Ayodhya Ram temple donation embezzlement issue came up for discussion. All the in-charges have been tasked with assessing the fallout from the issue and gauging public sentiment after allegations have been levelled against the temple authorities.

RSS coordination meetings are not new; these happen every year. However, similar exercises were held in 2018 before the 2019 Lok Sabha election and again in 2021, ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls, both of which resulted in strong electoral performances for the BJP in UP. No such structured coordination exercise preceded the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

Political analyst Badri Narayan says that the organisation is “continuously working”, regardless of whether an election is imminent. He adds that the RSS’ sustained engagement with different communities may benefit political parties aligned with their ideological context, even though the organisation does not have any electoral objective.

The RSS’ push in UP seems to be on the lines of the extensive voter-awareness campaigns and grassroots outreach across Haryana and West Bengal ahead of the Assembly polls. In West Bengal, the group’s volunteers, through a network of 14 affiliated organisations, reportedly held more than one lakh group meetings in 250 constituencies, urging people to “cast their votes without fear this time”. In Haryana, too, by September 2024, the RSS launched voter-outreach programmes and reportedly deployed more than 150 volunteers in all 22 districts.

An RSS functionary says that groups of four or five people will move around bastis and villages. There will be about 80 or more such groups in each of UP’s 75 districts. “This is of the RSS alone,” he says. “Then there are such groups from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad [ABVP], the Vishva Hindu Parishad [VHP], the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh [BKS], the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and, of course, the BJP. There are groups from other organisations such as the Vidya Bharati, too. Almost 15,000 groups, on average, will conduct around 30 meetings each. So at least five lakh meetings will take place during the outreach to more than 40 lakh families in this exercise termed Lokmat Parishkar.”

He says that the VHP will engage with temple committees, social organisations and smaller places of worship; the ABVP will reach out to students; and the BKS will engage with farmers and their families. “We don’t canvass. We encourage people to enrol and vote. We will speak on issues of national and local importance,” he explains.

Giving the example of Bundelkhand, the functionary says that if there was a drought, volunteers would raise people’s concerns with the authorities while also highlighting the government’s schemes and water conservation measures. “If they have concerns about exam-paper leaks, we will explain the steps taken to tackle them,” he adds. These are informal meetings.

Leaving No Stone Unturned

Politics is theatre and spectacle. The BJP has begun it in earnest more than eight months ahead of elections in their biggest state. It had warring camps associated with Yogi Adityanath, Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak go to each other’s homes along with BJP national president Nitin Nabin and share mangoes with each other. They gave the cameras what they wanted. The message was underscored.

Nabin was in Lucknow on July 4 and 5 to review the party’s organisational preparedness and to lay the groundwork for the electoral battle. The meetings in Lucknow followed the coordination exercise in Ghaziabad, signalling that the party has formally shifted into election mode. One of the state leaders present at the meeting says it was decided that the Ram temple issue would not be ignored. “Whoever is the culprit will be punished. We are a party with a difference. We have to show that we accept responsibility and will take action.” According to sources, it was suggested in these meetings that Adityanath would be projected as the face of the BJP’s campaign. Nabin’s remarks strongly indicated that Adityanath will lead the campaign into 2027. The approach marks a shift from 2022, when the BJP did not explicitly project a chief ministerial face before the election.

According to Narayan, the BJP is approaching the upcoming election with a strong emphasis on organisational cohesion and meticulous preparation.

In the party’s newly announced UP organisational team, Other Backward Classes’ (OBCs’), representation has risen to 25 from 16 office-bearers in the previous team, the highest among all social groups. The move underlines the BJP’s focus on consolidating support among non-Yadav OBC communities. The party has tried to ensure representation across Scheduled Castes, particularly non-Jatavs, Scheduled Tribes, Rajputs, Vaishyas, Kayasthas and Jats. Within the general category, Brahmins have emerged as the best-represented group, with 12 appointments, followed by nine Rajputs (Thakurs).

With nearly every aspect of the campaign, from organisation and candidate selection to messaging and alliance management now under discussion, the party has begun a long and carefully managed march towards the 2027 UP Assembly elections.

(This story appeared in Outlook magazine’s August 3 issue, 'The AI Divide', which focuses on how India's AI education ambitions are colliding with the reality of inadequate digital infrastructure, undertrained teachers and AI tools that are not built around Indian students' cultural context)