In Uttar Pradesh, Adityanath struggles to contain groundswell of anger from OBC groups

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath is yet to recover from the upset in last year’s Lok Sabha elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s paltry tally of 33 seats out of the state’s 80 has exposed him to taunts from within the Hindutva organisation.

The latest attack comes from Nand Kishor Gurjar, the BJP MLA from Loni Assembly in Ghaziabad. On March 20, Gurjar and his workers clashed with police officials while marching in a religious procession. At a dramatic press conference after the scuffle, Gurjar showed up in a torn kurta and declared that “no other government in India had ever seen so much corruption” as Adityanath’s.

“Bureaucrats have cast a spell on Yogiji in the last two years – before that Yogiji was doing good work,” he said. “They give Yogiji an issue and make him talk about it. Then they loot the state and its people.”

The legislator added that cow slaughter, fake encounters, rapes, murder and robbery were rife in the state and alleged that there had been a police conspiracy to kill him during the scuffle.

Ninety kilometres away, another BJP leader, former Union minister Sanjeev Balyan, is publicly protesting against the arrest of local party leader Vivek Premi. For over a month, shopowners in Shamli’s Gandhi chowk have been...

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