Aryan Khan, the 23 year old son of superstar Shah Rukh Khan, currently under detention in a case of alleged drug abuse, will feature as a major issue in the all-important Uttar Pradesh elections due in four months.
Highly placed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sources told Gulf News that Shah Rukh Khan and his son symbolise all that is wrong with the “Mumbai way of life”.
Back in 2015, Yogi Adityanath, Chief Minister (CM) of Uttar Pradesh, had compared Shah Rukh Khan to Hazif Sayeed, mastermind of the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, while reacting to Khan’s comments on growing “intolerance” in India. Adityanath was then a BJP member of parliament (MP) from Gorakhpur.
Now as UP CM, Yogi Adityanath plans a fully-fledged campaign highlighting the case. Already election funding has been drawn up to blitzkrieg the UP voters over the emotive issue. This campaign has presently been launched on WhatsApp groups (BJP has the largest social media groups in India) and across scores of social media pages.
BJP also plans to have cattle protection and other high-octane issues on top of its agenda during the upcoming elections.
BJP’s game plan in UP
The party is stepping on the gas and expects to do well despite missteps such as the awful handling of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Lakhimpur Kheri incident where Ashish Mishra, the son of Ajay Kumar Mishra, the junior home minister, allegedly ran over and killed nearly four protesting farmers on October 3.
A total of eight people were killed in the incident after violence broke out. Six days transpired before Ashish Mishra was arrested but Ajay Mishra continues to be a part of BJP cabinet.
Yogi Adityanath, however, did swift damage control. He ensured that no opposition political leader could reach Lakhimpur till after the funerals and did a mega reach out to Rakesh Tikait, the farmer’s leader, who struck a surprisingly conciliatory tone.
Yogi Adityanath is trying his best, using two trusted aides who are his emissaries to Tikait, that come time for voting, he is able to blunt the farmers agitation specially in western UP, which is considered the Jat belt of UP. Yogi also wants to ensure that Mishra step down from his post of junior minister in the Union cabinet.
Despite, the emotive nature of the incident, which showcased a brutal power crazed son of a strong man literally running riot over people, the incident is now only receiving muted coverage in the media.
A pliable media
This is all the part of the BJP’s management of mainstream media which remains mum on incidents which show the BJP in bad light while reserving all the questions for the opposition.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Congress General Secretary, had made headlines when she managed to evade Yogi Adityanath’s security cordon and nearly made to Lakhimpur Kheri to meet the grieving families.
Gandhi was detained in a guesthouse and cornered all the headlines. A video of her sweeping the room where she was detained went viral.
Gandhi did make an impact but, the Congress has such a woeful structure in UP, lacking any ground presence that it is still an open question whether it convert in to votes for the party.
The Aryan Khan incident was a boon to the BJP as it immediately switched the headlines from the Lakhimpur incident and played on a favourite BJP trope — attacking the Muslim superstar.
The political slugfest has seen both Sharad Pawar, chief of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena chief and Maharashtra CM, slam the BJP for using India's Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) to settle political scores.
Expect BJP leadership to return fire in public meetings in UP. The muted response of regional parties and their leaders Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party and Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party to Lakhimpur is telling. Mayawati is often accused of being the BJP’s “B” team.
The fact that the opposition reaction to the arrest of Aryan Khan is coming from Mumbai and not poll bound UP is the real story.
