Aiming to be a lead player and not just a balancing factor in UP politics in the post poll scenario, the BJP closed its campaigning for the first phase of the Assembly polls hoping to dent the Samajwadi Party in its own strongholds with the belief it could benefit from the anti-incumbency sentiment against the SP.

A day after SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav campaigned in Etah, considered an SP stronghold because of its large Yadav vote base, BJP president Rajnath Singh made a last minute effort to take advantage of the anti-SP factor by targeting Yadav in rural and semi-urban segments of Etah. On a day when the Allahabad High Court said the Muslims were not a minority, Singh made no mention of minority appeasement or the spread of terrorism to new areas, focusing instead on law and order, corruption, development issues like water, power, roads, sugarcane prices, and inflation. In so doing, he attacked both the SP and Mayawati’s BSP.

Singh’s speeches in the four Assembly constituencies he covered during the day, two each in the Agra and Etah, was about the failure of the SP to provide 24-hour power to farmers at Rs 2 per unit, inflated power bills, irregular water to the fields, a warning that Mayawati remained anti-upper caste despite her recent steps, and corruption cases against Mayawati and Yadav. Along with that was the BJP promise to provide farming loan at 6 per cent, and Rs 30,000 to the parents of every girl child born in a poor family, if it came to power.

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