The Jat face is being seen as a skilled organizational figure who will help the party in countering the anger of farmers in West UP.
The Jat face is being seen as a skilled organizational figure who will help the party in countering the anger of farmers in West UP.
After several days of speculation, the BJP appointed Bhupinder Singh, the Panchayati Raj minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet, as the party’s Uttar Pradesh president on August 25, 2022. He replaces Swatantra Dev Singh who resigned earlier this month.
Belonging to a Jat farmer family from Mahendri Sikanderpur village in Moradabad district of western Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Singh, 54, has been an organizational figure and is currently a member of the Legislative Council. The appointment is being seen as an attempt by the ruling party to reach out to the Jat community, which has been at the forefront of protesting farmers in the state’s sugarcane sector. After Haryana and Rajasthan, Mr. Singh is the third Jat leader who has been elevated to the post of state president by the BJP.
Mr Singh was the regional in-charge of the party during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and 2017 assembly elections and worked closely with the then party president Amit Shah. He is being seen as an RSS candidate with the support of the central leadership.
Party sources said, apart from the Jat farmer background, Mr Singh’s organizational skills and the party’s intent to strike an east-west balance in governance and organization tilted the decision in his favor. Also, with the appointment of Dharampal Saini as the party’s General Secretary (Organisation), the party needed a Jat leader to balance the ground equation. A source said, “The Saini community has voted heavily for the party, so it needs to be rewarded, but at the same time the Jats also need to be wooed.”
Observers are pointing to the BJP’s sweeping victory in the assembly elections, with Moradabad and its adjoining Saharanpur division standing like a sore throat. In Moradabad division, the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance won 17 out of 27 seats, while in Saharanpur they won nine out of 16 seats, seven of which came from Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts, the center of Jat Khaps. In many of the seats won by the BJP in these divisions, the margin of victory was very small.
This signaled a revival of the Jat-Muslim union which could turn out to be a headache for the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Interestingly, Mr. Saini hails from Bijnor, which falls in Moradabad division, where the SP-RLD and the BJP have won four seats each.
Mr Singh represents the Jats who started voting as Hindus after the Ram Mandir movement and got the benefit of the first mover.
Professor Dr. Ajit Singh, SSV College, Hapur, who has closely watched Mr. Singh’s rise, described him as a leader who has found acceptance beyond his community and is respected for his selfless service to the party. has been done. “After a short stint with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, he joined the BJP in 1991, when the party was not known for standing up for Jats and farmers. In 1999, he took on Mulayam Singh Yadav from Sambhal, when many in the party were unwilling to take on the SP’s force. Contrary to the aggressive image of Jat leaders, he said, Mr Singh has a self-destructive demeanor that works well in a cadre-based party. “But behind the scenes, he’s very effective.” From 2006-2017, Mr. Singh has worked in Western UP first as Regional Secretary and then as Regional President.
As Minister of Panchayati Raj (first with independent charge and then as Cabinet Minister), his work was lauded for constructing a record number of toilets as part of the PM’s ambitious Swachh Bharat Mission. According to the UP government, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj has an important role in making all 75 districts of the state open defecation free.
However, Rajpal Balyan, chief of the RLD’s legislature party in the assembly, said the appointment of Mr Jagdeep Dhankhar and Mr Singh proved that “the BJP is living in fear of the RLD and the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh”. “As the Minister of Panchayati Raj, he failed to control the farmers’ movement. As in-charge of Muzaffarnagar district, he could not stop the SP-RLD alliance from winning four out of six seats in the assembly elections. His appointment is an acknowledgment of our effective presence at the grassroots level,” said the Budhana MLA.