Controversial BJP MP Yogi Adityanath to be Star Campaigner in UP By-Elections

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Aug 28, 2014: Controversial BJP lawmaker Yogi Adityanath is among three BJP leaders who have been handed charge of campaigning for by-elections in Uttar Pradesh by party chief Amit Shah.

The others are UP veteran and union minister Kalraj Mishra and the party’s state unit chief Laxmikant Bajpayee. They will address public meetings in all the 11 assembly seats for which by-elections will be held, between September 5 and 10. Elections are on September 13 and votes will be counted on the 16th.

Yogi Adityanath, a 42-year-old saffron robed member of Parliament from Gorakhpur in UP, is caught in the middle of a political storm after an undated video purportedly showing him making an incendiary speech surfaced. In the video he purportedly vows that for "every Hindu converted, 100 Muslim girls will be converted as retaliation."

The lawmaker, who recently opened a debate in Parliament on communal violence for his party, has described the video as a "cut and paste" job in an interview to NDTV.

His appointment to lead campaigning is being seen as significant in view of the BJP’s recent meeting held to set its political agenda in UP. A political resolution passed did not use the term "love jihad" but amply alluded to the party’s "concern" over what it calls the baiting of Hindu women by Muslim men into love and marriage to force them into religious conversion.

’Love jihad’ is a term that members of the Sangh Parivar - as the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh or RSS and its affiliates like the BJP are together know - have been using in UP. Political rivals have accused the BJP of attempting to polarise voters.

By-elections will be held next month in assembly seats in districts like Saharanpur and Moradabad which have witnessed communal tension recently. At least four seats where by-elections will be held are in western UP, which was torn apart by deadly riots in September last year.

Amit Shah, now BJP chief, had scripted a big win for his party in Uttar Pradesh in the national elections earlier this year. The BJP won 71 of UP’s 80 seats. Its rivals allege that it was helped by the polarisation caused by the communal violence in western UP months before.

 

Courtesy:NDTV