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BJP youth wing — Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) — will launch a statewide campaign in universities and colleges to “caution” young voters against the possibility of return to “jungle raj”, poor law and order, and misgovernance if SP comes back to power.
These are among the questions that BJP plans to toss up at the youth as it seeks to turn the memories of Akhilesh govt into an electoral narrative before the Assembly polls.
“A good number of youth think that the situation prevailing today also existed between 2012 and 2017. Analysts said BJP’s strategy reflects an emerging feature of the 2027 contest: the battle over Uttar Pradesh ’s political memory. For BJP, the 2012-17 SP govt represents a period that can be invoked to reinforce its core law-and-order narrative. In UP, the youth-centric drive is being sharpened with Yogi Adityanath promising over 1 lakh govt jobs to them over the next six months.
BJP’s challenge, therefore, is not merely to attack SP’s record but to make a generation of young voters relate to a period it only knows largely through political narratives.
They need to be corrected and apprised of the reality,” UP BJYM president Rohit Mishra told TOI. The party has repeatedly sought to contrast Yogi govt’s governance model with the “jungle raj” of the SP era. The campaign, tentatively titled ‘Sarthak Yuva Samvad’, is expected to be rolled out soon after the constitution of state and district-level teams of BJYM. It will directly engage students and first-time voters with BJP MPs, MLAs and MLCs who are expected to participate in the interactions. They believe that a change in govt would not alter the conditions. The challenge, however, is that younger voters may not necessarily share that memory. After the Cockroach Janta Party-led protest over the NEET paper leak forced education minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign. BJP leadership, including PM Narendra Modi and BJP national president Nitin Nabin, have been treading cautiously while reaching out to youth on various occasions.