The BJP leadership on Thursday appointed Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary, a prominent Jat face, as the new party president of Uttar Pradesh, baring an unusual emphasis on wooing the agrarian community that had spearheaded the farmers’ agitation.

The BJP now has a Jat leader as party chief in three states — Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana — all spread around the centre of power in Delhi and seen as a cushion for the 2024 general election. In regions close to Delhi in all these three states, the agrarian Jat community has a strong presence.

In addition, the party had recently got Jagdeep Dhankhar, a Jat from Rajasthan, elevated as the Vice-President of the country. The candidature of Dhankhar was played up by the BJP as that of a “kisan putra”, aimed as an outreach towards the farmers whose anger had forced Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take back the farm laws.

Bhupendra Chaudhary is now the panchayati raj minister in the Yogi Adityanath government. He replaces Swatantra Dev Singh, an OBC leader. Chaudhary hails from the Jat-dominated region of western Uttar Pradesh that had turned into the epicentre of the farmers’ agitation.

In the Assembly polls earlier this year, the BJP had not performed as badly as was initially assumed in the Jat-dominated western Uttar Pradesh but had lost some 15 sitting constituencies because of the stiff challenge posed by the SP-RLD combination. Chaudhary hails from the Moradabad region where the BJP’s performance was particularly dismal.

“Although we had managed to retain the upper hand in wider western UP, large sections of Jats had voted against us and for the SP-RLD combine in the Assembly polls. The main reason for the anger among Jats was the farm laws,” a BJP leader said, adding that the leadership wants to woo back the agrarian community, not taking any chances for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

The extraordinary importance accorded to Jats also indicates a change of electoral strategy by the BJP. Since 2014, the Modi-Amit Shah-led BJP had sought to woo the support of smaller castes, not the dominant Jats.

This had paid dividends, particularly in Haryana, where Manohar Lal Khattar, a non-Jat, was made chief minister. In the case of Uttar Pradesh, the BJP had used the Muzaffarnagar communal riots to secure the support of Jats. In Rajasthan, the Jats did not figure prominently in the party’s electoral strategy.

Now, for the first time, the BJP has a Jat leader, Satish Poonia, as Rajasthan party chief. The Thakurs had dominated the BJP in Rajasthan, seen in the dominant leadership of former chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia. Rajasthan goes to the polls next year, and the party this time appears to be making a special effort to woo the Jats who constitute around 12 per cent of the state’s population, BJP leaders said.

The overemphasis on Jats, however, was read as a sign of jitters in the top leadership over electoral calculations for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Party insiders indicated that the leadership could be apprehending substantial losses after the exit of Nitish Kumar in Bihar, and so was rushing to take corrective measures.

NEET results

New Delhi: The results of the medical entrance exam NEET-UG, which saw the highest-ever number of applications this year, will be announced by September 7, according to National Testing Agency officials.

The NTA will upload the provisional answer keys, scanned images of OMR answer sheets and recorded responses on its website by August 30, they said.

PTI