Amit Shah tweaks Kalyan Singh's 1991 formula to regain Uttar Pradesh

NEW DELHI: Kalyan Singh may be comfortably ensconced in the Jaipur Raj Bhavan and a world away from the feverish political activity in Uttar Pradesh. However, the plan BJP is working on to get back to power in Lucknow is one the former UP chief minister perfected in the late 1980s to great success.

Back then, Singh was acutely aware that BJP could never hope to win in UP without expanding its core vote of upper castes and the trading community. With Muslims arrayed like a wall against the party and Yadavs and Jatavs ranged solidly behind Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, he decided to aggressively woo non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits. The move met with spectacular success with BJP forming its first government in 1991.

Mounting its first serious challenge for power in the state in over a decade, BJP under Amit Shah is looking to retool the Lodh strongman's blueprint with minor alterations, like adding the influential Jats to the mix.

It is also a story of the wheel turning full circle for Singh. The lynchpin of the BJP in UP in the heady 1990s when he could do no wrong, he fell foul of palace intrigue and even had to leave the party for a while. The BJP looking to do a Kalyan in UP 25 years later attests to the soundness of Singh's strategy of fusing Hindutva with backward empowerment.

Singh's formula of attracting non-Yadav OBC and non-Jatav SC castes to BJP was junked once he lost heft in the party, that is till Shah emerged on the scene. Convinced of the tactic's efficacy, the party chief returned to it during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls with breathtaking results. BJP's renewed backward focus is writ large as it aggressively woos a section that gravitated to it during the 2014 polls when Narendra Modi reached out with a development plus Hindutva theme, strongly underpinned by his OBC roots.

In a situation where it does not have a leader - OBC or otherwise - who can transfer votes, BJP has made its move and ticket seekers who flocked to meet Singh when he was in Lucknow recently point to the veteran leader's hand in helping the party identify winning nominees. Non-Yadav OBC castes have bagged 56 seats of the 149 declared on Monday for western UP and NCR constituencies and the ratio of backward candidates is likely to increase further as seats in central and eastern regions are taken up.

The pitch for a segment that, unlike the Yadavs, is not wedded to the Samajwadi Party on purely caste lines is intended to tap into political empowerment of other backward castes. BJP has promoted several leaders from such OBC castes including state chief Keshav Maurya.