Uma Bharti's yatra and a future as UP CM

Uma Bharti's plan to undertake 2,300km Ganga Yatra from Gangotri to Ganga Sagar is a move to expand her support base in Uttar Pradesh. Bharti, who comes from the OBC Lodh community, has substantial support in the community which is concentrated across nearly 12 of the 75 districts of Uttar Pradesh and the Bundelkhand region in Madhya Pradesh. This was the reason why she was not pressurised to give up a safe Parliament seat in Jhansi to take on Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli despite the RSS reaching out to her on the issue.

Bharti who shot into national prominence during the Ram Janmbhoomi movement, has spent many years outside the party after having rebelled in 2004-05. Her years outside the party were lonely and politically isolated, but she retained her contact with RSS, which always pushed her case.

When Nitin Gadkari became party president in 2009, he brought her into the BJP within a year before the UP Assembly election.

Lodhs are the third most prominent community in the Other Backward Class after Yadavs and Kurmis. They have traditionally been big supporters of the BJP under the leadership of Kalyan Singh. Bharti not only campaigned in the Lodh dominant Assembly seats of UP but also won the election from Charkhari Assembly election in district Mahoba.

She has always spoken her mind. Even during the campaign for General Elections in her constituency Jhansi, the 55-year-old sadhvi raised questioned BJP's then prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. "Vajpayeeji was a very good orator,"she said. "It is said that there has been no other orator like him in Indian politics. If you have observed minutely you would have found that Modi is not a good orator. But still people are coming to his rallies not to listen but to tell him that they want him to change this country and they support him."

When the statement went public, Bharti, who was already at odds with the leadership over refusing to fight from Rae Bareli, clarified that "the attempt to make it look like that there is infighting among the BJP leaders is not going to work. All I said as that Modiji a "unique" leader and that people are flocking to hear him at his rallies because of work that he has done."

But with backing from the RSS and former BJP national president Gadkari, Bharti became cabinet minister for water resource, river development and the newly established Ganga Rejuvenation Department. With Kalyan Singh, who was inducted into the BJP before the General Elections, being appointed as governor of Rajasthan, the field is open for Bharti to be the pre-eminent Lodh leader in the party in Uttar Pradesh. Since BJP doesn’t have any prominent OBC face in the state so Uma Bharti is eyeing a future as chief minister of UP after the 2017 Assembly election.