Selective exclusion

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah has deputed many of his lieutenants from Uttar Pradesh to manage election work in Maharashtra, including strategist Sunil Bansal. These leaders, BJP leadership hopes, could help repeat in Maharashtra the Lok Sabha success the party achieved in UP. However, some of the more controversial leaders from UP, like Yogi Adityanath, have been asked to stay away from the election campaign. Others such as Suresh Rana and Sanjeev Kumar Baliyan, known for their aggressive Hindutva, have been tasked with managing the Haryana Assembly elections. Haryana does not have a significant Muslim population and elections are rarely fought on the politics of polarisation in this state. Clearly, the effort is to keep these leaders away from Maharashtra as the BJP's election campaign in the state focuses on the plank of development.