Kerala MP John Brittas said he doesn't believe for a moment that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath picked three states in different corners of the country – Bengal, Kashmir and his southern home state – “at random” in warning voters not to boot the BJP from power in Uttar Pradesh.

“He's not an ignorant sadhu but he's a diabolical sadhu," says the CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member. "His only game is to divide the people,” he added.

“He picked these three states because they all have large Muslim populations," Brittas said.

“For a long time, they (the BJP) have been trying to depict Kerala as a state where there is Muslim extremism,” Brittas said. “He’s bringing Kerala and equating it with Kashmir or Bengal because of the Muslim factor, nothing else. And, of course… as a person who believes cow dung and cow urine would be enough to save the lives of this world, he has many misconceptions.”

In what appeared to be an absurd warning, Adityanath said in a six-minute video on Thursday, the first day of polling in the state, that if people didn’t vote for the BJP, Uttar Pradesh could become like Kerala, Bengal or Kashmir – all of which boast much better performance on social indicators.

But Yogi wasn’t talking about the social indicators but rather seeking to exploit communal fault lines in Uttar Pradesh and push the BJP’s Hindutva agenda, said Brittas.

Yogi issued the bizarre message because of “the pressing need to have polarisation to win the elections” in Uttar Pradesh, Brittas said. “And his campaign slogan has always been that it is a fight between the 80 per cent (Hindu) and the 20 per cent (Muslim populations).. He picked Kerala precisely because of that,” he said.

Adityanath urged people not “to make a mistake” when they voted in the seven-phase election. “Beware!... Your vote will decide the future of Uttar Pradesh,” he said. If the BJP is not returned to power, “the labour of these five years will be spoiled. It would not take much time for Uttar Pradesh to become Kashmir, Kerala and Bengal,” he warned.

For Adityanath this was his last appeal to the public before they headed to the voting booths. Unsurprisingly, in fact almost inevitably, he chose to unsubtly harp on the threat from the Muslim community. The fact that the Opposition appears to be drawing large crowds at its rallies only added to the need to hammer home this point one last time.

“Muslims are in the mainstream (in Kerala, they are part of the government). Part of the legislature. Muslim emancipation is there. They are not second class citizens as in UP,” Brittas said.

With his campaign message, Adityanath only appears to have succeeded in uniting opponents who have been brandishing a formidable array of statistics to show there is little that UP tops the charts in apart from the population. Kerala, Kashmir and Bengal are doing much better than UP on a host of social, health and literacy-related parameters as well as on economic growth.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said if Uttar Pradesh turned into God’s Own Country it would be the best thing that had ever happened to people in the state. In a press statement, he urged UP voters to cast their ballots “with due carelessness” so that they could enjoy the same level of development as Kerala.

The Kerala chief minister listed a string of benefits people in Uttar Pradesh would enjoy if the state became another Kerala. ”It will enjoy the best education, health services, social welfare, living standards,” said Vijayan. UP would also be “a harmonious society in which people won't be murdered in the name of religion and caste". That's what the people of UP would want, he said, adding “it’s strange to note that Yogi Adityanath is trying to put such a state in a bad light.”

In a Twitter blitz the Kerala chief minister also put out charts and maps to establish how Kerala was far out in front on many scores. Kerala, he pointed out, has the lowest poverty levels nationally, the highest literacy and infant mortality statistics that match developed Western countries.

Brittas noted that Yogi had astonished Malayalees when he visited the state in 2017 and said the government could learn from UP on “how to run hospitals.” Yogi lectured us “on how to have the health infrastructure improved. He was giving sermons when Kerala has health indices equivalent to the West,” he said.

Kerala BJP state president K Surendran defended Adityanath’s statements, saying the UP chief minister had no intention of maligning Kerala but was accusing the state government of being soft on terrorism.

West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress also took aim at Yogi. “Bengal will never become Adityanath’s UP. Instead UP will set an example of harmony and amity by dislodging him from power,” said TMC Rajya Sabha MP Santanu Sen.

Sen said the BJP has “sensed defeat in the upcoming UP elections which is why it is now trying to sow discord among people of the northern state by portraying amity and peace in West Bengal in a negative light.” He said that seeking to divide the population “is an old game of the BJP when it finds the going tough.”

Kashmir’s former chief minister Omar Abdullah lambasted Adityanath as well over his comments, noting Jammu and Kashmir has “less poverty, better human development indices, less crime and generally better standards of living than UP.”

Striking a mocking tone, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor tweeted that UP “should be so lucky” for the chief minister’s warning to come true. “Kashmir’s beauty, Bengal’s culture and Kerala’s education would do wonders for the place,” Tharoor said.