BJP seeks to dent SP-BSP vote bank in eastern UP

Wary of the impact of the possible electoral alliance between arch rivals Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in the next Lok Sabha polls in 2019, BJP is trying to dent the vote bank of the two parties to sweep the eastern region of Uttar Pradesh.

Apparently keeping it in mind prime minister Narendra Modi not only launched the ambitious Poorvanchal Expressway project from Azamgarh, about 300 kilometres from the state capital of Lucknow on Saturday, but also addressed a public meeting in which he sought to woo the Muslim women besides the 'Yadavs' and D alits, who formed the core vote bank of SP and BSP respectively.

In the 2014 polls, BJP had failed to win the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat. The saffron party had managed to win only one of the ten assembly seats in the district, which had a sizeable population of 'Muslims, Yadavs' and Dalits.

Being an important centre for Islamic education in the eastern UP, the ''electoral behaviour'' of the Muslims here could affect the voting preference of the community across the region, political experts say.

''There are several well known Islamic seminaries in the district... students from across the country study there....any change in their attitude here is bound to have some impact on the community elsewhere,'' said a local scribe in Azamgarh while speaking to DH.

Modi, in his speech here, also invoked Dalit icon B.R.Ambedkar and socialist ideologue Ram Manohar Lohi apparently eyeing the SP-BSP vote bank.

The prime minister also said in his speech that the message from Azamgarh would reach the entire eastern region of the state.

According to the BJP sources, Modi is likely to address more public meetings in the eastern districts of UP in the run-up to the 2019 general elections. ''Poorvanchal is crucial for us,'' said a local BJP leader while conceding that the SP-BSP alliance could pose a serious challenge to the saffron party in the next Lok Sabha polls.

The alliance had caused a huge upset, when it defeated the BJP in Gorakhpur, the hometown of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and Phulpur, which was represented in the Lok Sabha by deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, in the recent bypolls.