Akhilesh Yadav ‘re-castes’ SP for UP polls with Mandal 2.0

As Akhilesh Yadav’s Vijay Rath winds through the narrow streets of Jaunpur, the only speck of contrast in the sea of red caps is a yellow muffler worn by Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief Om Prakash Rajbhar.

Rajbhar, an estranged ally of BJP, is a key cog that drives SP’s tactical shift to recast itself for the 2022 UP Assembly polls.

Like SBSP, Akhilesh has sought to shun national parties like Congress and BSP to align with about half a sub-dozen sub-regional outfits, which have pockets of influence among backward and most-backwards communities.

“Our experience with national parties in the past has not been good. It did not serve the purpose for which we aligned with them,” he tells DH atop his rath.

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Standing beside him is Krishna Patel — the Apna Dal leader whose party has influence among the backward Kurmi community in central and eastern UP.

Krishna has decided to back Akhilesh this election, while her daughter and Union minister Anupriya Patel has cast her lot with the BJP.

This leg of SP’s state-wide yatra has coincided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 48-hour visit to Varanasi.

At Malhani bazaar amidst a collage of red, orange, yellow and blue flags, Akhilesh hops, skips and jumps past issues which may polarise polity on communal lines. He instead lures BJP to the caste pitch.

“A large section of the backward communities not only want caste enumeration but also want their participation to be proportional to their population. Within three months of coming to power, we will hold a caste census in the state,” Akhilesh tells DH.

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The political line is straight out of the new thought process among the Mandal parties triggered by the central government’s decision to extend quota benefits to the EWS, a policy decision that breaches the 50% threshold on reservations imposed by the Supreme Court in the Indra Sawhney case.

By promising to hold a caste census, the SP not only aims to mobilise all backward castes, especially those smaller groups which had shifted allegiance to the BJP post-2012 elections as a reaction to Yadav dominance in the backward block and the rise of Modi at the Centre.

Akhilesh is also trying to make it a little tough for the BJP, which has thus far adroitly managed to strike a fine balance between disparate social groups like upper castes and backwards.

The urge to seek an alliance with smaller parties is also driven by the lessons learnt from neighbouring Bihar, where Lalu Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal shunned alliance offer from smaller parties to its own detriment.

In contrast, SP as a party and Yadavs as a community are demonstrably underscoring their intent to share power and accommodate the have-nots in the subaltern communities. A new and more inclusive identity politics is in the works in battleground UP.

(The writer is a journalist)

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