The UPShot: ‘Tiffin Pe Charcha’ to Make 2024 Lok Sabha Polls A Cakewalk for BJP in State?

Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) 30-day mass connect programme in Uttar Pradesh — launched on May 30 not just to mark nine years of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, but also to bolster its mass connect ahead of 2024 Lok Sabha Polls – approaches its end, the party seems to be in no mood to take any chance for the Lok Sabha Seats it lost in the 2019 Lok Sabha Polls.

The BJP got more than 600 volunteers, YouTube influencers, senior party leaders and heavyweights for its programme – ‘Tiffin pe Charcha’ or ‘Khane pe Charcha’ – which ends on June 30. However, the special focus is the 16 Lok Sabha Seats it lost in UP. Party insiders said the party is interested in regaining its foothold there.

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“The BJP has special plans for these seats, where it is using ‘Tiffin pe Charcha’ as the new tool to woo people and spread awareness about the development work, which the party carried out in nine years of the Modi government at the Centre and during the first and second tenure of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath,” a senior party leader said.

Dharampal Singh, BJP’s state general secretary, who recently held a meeting with the volunteers, said that for these seats, the volunteers were trained to highlight the works. “Party functionaries, including MLA and local people, held discussions over meals with some influential families of the region. At least 200 families of actors, scientists, freedom fighters, doctors, sportspersons and others were shortlisted,” Singh said.

OPPOSITION STILL NOT UNITED

However, political pandits and experts feel that the 2024 Lok Sabha elections will be a cakewalk for the party with the effective ‘Tiffin pe Charcha’ and no ‘Mahagathbandhan’ formula in place.

Shashikant Pandey, head, department of political science, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, said, “The BJP’s Tiffin pe Charcha will leave a mark as the entire outreach programme was convincing. The fight for the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha Polls will also be comparatively easy for the party, given the dearth of a strong opposition and anti-BJP alliance.”

Pandey said that in March, Samajwadi Party Chief (SP) Akhilesh Yadav met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during his two-day visit to Kolkata to attend the party’s national executive meeting. The “planned” meet between the two leaders was enough to kickstart speculations in the political circles of Uttar Pradesh and across the country, hinting at the emergence of an anti-BJP alliance ahead of 2024.

Thereafter, SP national vice-president Kiranmoy Nanda announced that his party will work unitedly to fight the BJP in Lok Sabha Polls, but there is no hint of any alliance so far.

Pandey said that the idea of forming an anti-BJP front is not new to UP, as it has witnessed a similar arrangement in the 2019 Lok Sabha Polls, when Mahagathbandhan was formed to beat the BJP, but it failed to make any difference.

The Mahagathbandhan or Grand Alliance, Pandey said, was formed in the run-up to the 2019 general elections under the leadership of Yadav, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati and Rashtriya Lok Dal’s chief Ajit Singh. The alliance was anti-Congress and anti-BJP.

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“Of the total 80 seats in UP, the Grand Alliance left two seats for Congress’s Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi to whom the BSP had declared its support. But the arrangement failed to make any difference, as the BJP bagged 51.19% of the vote share against Mahagathbandhan’s 39.23%. The Congress managed to score merely 6.41% votes. The BJP bagged 62 seats, whereas the Mahagathbandhan bagged 15 in total,” pointed out Pandey.

However, he said Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, his disqualification and issues such as growing unemployment and inflation could play spoilsport for the BJP.