Worry in UP BJP over student protests as pitch grows for damage control before 2027

In this interaction with over two dozen medical aspirants, Chaudhary also claimed, “Dozens of papers were leaked in past governments but Modi govt has taken stern legal and administrative steps to make the examinations leak proof.” He added that three “leak-proof” exams were conducted in the last one month.

Earlier, on Wednesday, Chaudhary led a march in Lucknow — from the VVIP guest house to the Congress office — to protest against Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi’s Tuesday sit-in outside the PM’s residence in the national capital.

“That Lucknow march of BJP was only to raise the morale of party workers who were facing questions from the public after the students’ protests on paper leaks and July 20 police action against them in Delhi,” said a party leader.

Sources in the BJP hold that Chaudhary’s meeting with students was a pointer that “there are uneasiness and apprehensions” within the party and its UP government over the students’ protests and its possible fallout in the state Assembly elections slated for early 2027.

Party insiders said Chaudhary sought to counter “adverse perception” which arose after videos of lathi-charge by the Delhi police on protesting students during their march on Parliament on July 20 started dominating social media.

“Genuine students might be small in numbers in the protesting crowd but police action on them with canes and tear gas shells has sent a negative message to people. Every family has a student or a job-aspiring youth and the delay in response from the government on students’ demands and police lathi-charge have upset every Indian family,” a BJP leader noted.

“After the PM’s midnight video proposing a stringent new law against paper leaks, Chaudhary’s meeting with medical aspirants indicates that the UP BJP is worried to a large extent due to such leaks and youth protests, and their demands for fixing accountability. However, it would be premature to ascertain its possible impact on the upcoming elections in five states including UP in 2027,” said a senior BJP leader.

BJP sources said the state party leadership has especially been concerned as the “youth distress caused by leaks in various exams, mainly recruitment exams” was one of the key reasons the party had identified for its sub-par performance in UP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in which its seat tally fell from 62 to 33 of the state’s 80 seats while its vote share declined from 49.98% to 41.37%. The Samajwadi Party (SP) had then won 37 seats, its best-ever performance in the Lok Sabha polls.

A BJP functionary said when he visited a pharmacy in Lucknow Thursday, a small gathering of people there expressed anger over the paper leaks and lathi-charge on students. “They were asking why the government responded so late to the demands of the youths and Cockroach Janta Party (CJP),” he said.

Another party leader said on Saturday that if Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had not delayed his resignation, taking moral responsibility soon after the NEET leak in May, “the intensity of anger among youths against the government might not have shot up and the Opposition, too, would not have got any opportunity to cash in on the issue. Now, Pradhan has been forced to resign, but a key question remains why there was so much delay in it.”

He recalled that BJP veteran L K Advani had resigned from the Lok Sabha in 1996 after he was charged by the CBI in the hawala case and that Lal Bahadur Shastri had resigned as the Railway minister in 1956 following a train disaster, setting a historic precedent for ministerial accountability.

BJP leaders hope that the perception against the party-led NDA government would change soon in view of various government measures against paper leaks.“But the government should have done all this earlier. They under-estimated the CJP’s agitation. Several people are asking why the government did not meet the protesters and reach an understanding with them before July 20?” asked a senior leader.

Noting that top Congress and SP leaders were meeting protesters and staging dharna, a BJP leader said they were trying to take political mileage ahead of the UP polls. “But their strategy will fail because the Modi government’s fresh measures against paper leaks will contain the damage and send a positive message to youths,” he added.

Another party leader said some recent videos from Delhi showing youths making “indecent sloganeering” against the PM and the BJP or the RSS have sent a signal that “anti-BJP forces have hijacked the students’ protest”.

BJP MLC and ex-ABVP leader Santosh Singh said that on July 20 he saw in Delhi the activists of the SP’s frontal youth organisation, Samajwadi Yuvjan Sabha and Samajwadi Chhattra Sabha, participate in march from Jantar Mantar to Parliament. “The government is taking action on the demands of genuine students. But urban Naxal type people have hijacked the students’ protest… Nearly 70 per cent protesters were from political parties,” he alleged.

Singh said the Modi government took prompt action after the paper leaks and arrested the culprits, but did not get the opportunity to share details on the floor of the House because the Opposition have not allowed Parliament to function so far during the current Monsoon Session.

Singh said that similar protests held by farmers (against the now-repealed central farm laws) had happened in 2020-21 ahead of the 2022 UP polls. The farm protests could not have any impact on the UP polls because the Centre repealed the Bills in December 2021, he noted, claiming that the students’ protests would similarly not have any bearing on the upcoming UP polls which, he claimed, the BJP would clinch for the third consecutive time.

While the BJP won the 2022 polls, its tally dipped to 255 of 403 seats from 309 that it had bagged in 2017. The SP’s tally increased to 111 seats in 2022 from 47 seats in 2017.

A senior BJP leader said the party-led governments in UP and at the Centre should both “stay cautious over the next six months”. “If a paper leak happens in any exams in the next few months after recent assurances from the PM, it will have damaging effects for the BJP in the 2027 UP elections,” he said.

To counter the SP’s aggressive participation in recent youth protests, the UP BJP leaders have raked up their allegations against the previous SP regimes of “encouraging copying in exams and indulging in irregularities in recruitments”.

“People still ask the question – had you passed out in the Kalyan Singh period or during the Mulayam Singh Yadav regime? They ask this because copying and cheating was encouraged by the Mulayam government while the Kalyan-led BJP government had implemented strict anti-copying measures,” a BJP leader claimed.