Tale of two chaiwalas: Can KP Maurya do a Modi for BJP in UP?
The Uttar Pradesh unit of the BJP has several heavyweights. But on April 8, springing a surprise, the party appointed first-time Lok Sabha MP Keshav Prasad Maurya as the party’s state president. Maurya, an OBC leader, though hardly known outside Uttar Pradesh represents Phulpur - the Lok Sabha constituency of none other than the country's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Announcing the surprise decision, BJP's national general secretary Arun Singh told the media that Maurya comes “from a backward community and a very poor family. He sold newspapers and tea for a living”.
Thus, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP has now given another former "chaiwala" (tea seller) an important assignment. While the BJP highlighted Maurya's tea seller background, the Opposition pointed out the ten cases registered against him. The buzz in the media and on social media continues to revolve around these two schools of contention.
Here, it is perhaps worthwhile to point out that Modi and Maurya may share a similarity in terms of their antecedents, but there are also a few contrasts between them. First, let us look at the similarities.
Modi comes from a community that is identified as socially marginalised. He is an OBC from the Modh Ghanchi caste, which is the Gujarati equivalent of the Teli (oil-presser) caste of northern India. Likewise, Maurya is a Koeri and hence, an OBC. Koeri is a vegetable-selling caste and is spread across Uttar Pradesh.
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| Maurya has had the backing of late VHP leader Ashok Singhal. |
It is said that as a young boy, Modi helped his father at the tea stall in Vadnagar. Like Modi, Maurya, born in the Sirathu area of Kaushambi district, comes from a poor farming family. His father too ran a tea stall and a young Maurya helped out at the stall.
Maurya then worked as newspaper hawker before coming in contact with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP). Modi had joined the RSS as a young man, and his political and cultural education had been largely within the Sangh.
In 1990, when BJP leader LK Advani took off from the Somnath temple on his famous Rath Yatra to Ayodhya, Modi was his backroom manager. Similarly, Maurya, apart from being active in gauraksha (cow-protection) movements, also participated in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement.
Both Modi and Maurya had mighty political godfathers. Modi had, of course, been the blue-eyed boy of Advani. In 2001, Advani helped Modi become the chief minister of Gujarat for the first time, replacing the towering Keshubhai Patel.
When Modi was accused of mishandling the 2002 Gujarat riots and the clamour for his ouster grew, Advani stood by Modi like a rock. While former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was keen to remove Modi, Advani helped Modi save his job.
Reports say that the credit for bringing Maurya into active politics goes to the former VHP president Ashok Singhal. It was his closeness with Singhal that helped Maurya in getting tickets, first for the Assembly, and then for the Phulpur Lok Sabha seat, which he now represents. Senior BJP leader and grandson of former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Siddharth Nath Singh, was interested in contesting from Phulpur, but Singhal ensured that it was Maurya who got the ticket.
While there are these similarities between Modi and Maurya, the differences are quite stark too.
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| Modi had been the blue-eyed boy of LK Advani. |
Modi became the chief minister of Gujarat without winning a single election before. But thereafter, he has not only come out with flying colours in all his electoral contests but ensured victories for the party in all Assembly elections in Gujarat and also in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
But for Maurya, his political career started with defeats, as he lost two consecutive Assembly elections in 2002 and 2007. He tasted his first victory in the 2012 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh when he won from Kauhsmabi’s Sirathu seat. Maurya became his party’s candidate from Phulpur - a seat that had always evaded the BJP - in the 2014 election and won it for his party.
According to the latest details disclosed by the prime minister’s office (PMO), Modi’s total assets are to the tune of Rs 1.41 crore. It has gone up largely owing to a residential property that has appreciated in value by over 25 times since purchase about 13 years ago.
Modi does not own any motor vehicles. His jewellery holdings include four gold rings with a value of about Rs 1.19 lakh. Modi’s investments include L&T Infra Bonds (tax saving) worth Rs 20,000, and also National Savings Certificates (NSCs) worth about Rs 5.45 lakh. He keeps only about Rs 4,700 in terms of cash in hand. This is the sum total of Modi's earnings after serving as the chief minister of Gujarat for almost three terms and holding the top job in the country for more than a year.
In contrast, Maurya is a director in two private companies, owns a petrol station and is a partner in a private hospital in Allahabad. In 2007, when he contested the Assembly elections, his declared assets totalled Rs 1.36 crore. By the time he contested the next state election in 2012, his declared assets were worth Rs 13 crore. This is more than an 855 per cent increase in five years. While Modi doesn’t own a vehicle, his fellow tea seller Maurya owns two Tata Safaris, one Tata Magic and one tanker.
While the Varanasi MP, Modi, has no criminal cases against him, his fellow MP from Phulpur, Maurya, has many. A scrutiny of the affidavit submitted by Maurya during the 2014 parliamentary polls showed that cases of murder, loot, cheating, forgery and causing damage to government property have been registered against him. No charges have ever been framed against him in court while one case under the Goonda Act registered in Kaushambi in 2010 had been expunged by the district magistrate in 2010.
One former tea seller of the BJP, Modi, has delivered to the party what it has never achieved in history, that is full majority in the Lok Sabha. Many think that Modi may already have unseated Vajpayee as the party's biggest stalwart and most charismatic leader.
Now BJP president Amit Shah, who is known as the "Chanakya" of BJP’s politics has selected his Chandragupta in Uttar Pradesh in the form of Maurya, a former tea seller. Can Maurya do for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh what Modi has done in India? Can he deliver the biggest state of the country in terms of Assembly seats to the BJP?
This is the question that will surely be doing the rounds of all the chai addas of Uttar Pradesh from now until the elections.