In U.P., BJP’s strategy remains to make haste, but slowly

Party office-bearer does a stocktaking exercise in State

BJP general secretary (organisation) BL Santhosh’s visit to Lucknow over the last couple of days was a stocktaking exercise by the party in the State that goes to the polls, and while his meetings with party leaders and ministers in the Yogi Adityanath government set off speculation of large scale changes, the word from the central leadership is that for now, it will be more or less status quo. The government has been buffeted by allegations of mishandling the second wave of COVID-19. Four BJP MLAs and at least one Union Minister (Santosh Gangwar) have written to the Chief Minister on the ‘unsatisfactory’ handling of the second wave. On Wednesday, however, as he wound up his meetings, Mr. Santhosh expressed satisfaction over the government’s work. “In five weeks, @myogiadityanath’s Uttar Pradesh reduced the new daily case count by 93%. Remember it’s a state with 20+ crore population. When municipality CMs (chief ministers) could not manage a city of 1.5crore population, Yogiji managed quite effectively,” he tweeted. He also lauded the government’s decision to prioritise vaccination for those with children below the age of 12.