As the Bharatiya Janata Party gears up for the big political challenge in Uttar Pradesh for the 2027 assembly polls, it’s Union home minister Amit Shah who is likely to get involved in direct action with an address to the party’s state working committee in Lucknow on October 30.
Interestingly, it was only in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when the BJP was faced with the seemingly formidable rainbow coalition of the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party (SP-BSP) in UP that he addressed the state working meeting in late 2018 in Meerut. The BJP went on to win 62 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2019. Party leaders acknowledge that the party is facing a challenge ahead of 2027 polls amid the talk of the lack of coordination, cadre fatigue, caste-regional issues and the need to counter the likely Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance under the INDIA bloc umbrella which had pushed the BJP on the backfoot in the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh in 2024.
The move comes as the party looks to retain power for a third straight term in Uttar Pradesh.
The party is hopeful that Shah will replicate the 2014 Lok Sabha and 2017 assembly poll model, revamp booth committees district-wise, fix non-Yadav OBC, non-Jatav Dalit equations and assign clear roles to stem resentment in the ranks. Three years later, when Shah was the BJP national president, the party alone won 312 seats in the 2017 UP assembly polls and the NDA’s tally touched 325. Riding on its PDA plank, the SP pulled a large chunk of OBCs and Dalits into its fold in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, puncturing the BJP’s 60% social coalition as the SP’s tally jumped from five in 2019 to 37 seats. The Congress won six seats in Uttar Pradesh in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP’s tally fell to 33 in the state.
Shah’s entry is expected to help bridge differences and prime the party machinery for the poll test ahead.
