Nominating Jai Prakash Nishad is BJP's effort for Mallah outreach

By nominating Jai Prakash Nishad for Rajya Sabha by-election from UP, who filed his nomination on Thursday, BJP has made one more conscious effort to reach out to the Mallah or Kevat (boatmen) community, which has nearly five percent votes in the state and influences results in over 100 assembly segments in the state.

The by-election for Rajya Sabha scheduled on August 24, was necessitated following the demise of Samajwadi Party MP Beni Prasad Verma, who hailed from the Kurmi community, the second most dominant OBC community in the state after Yadavs.

Of 31 Rajya Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh, there are 15 from BJP, eight from SP and four of the Bahujan Samaj Party and two from the Congress. Two are vacant.

Nishad is a former Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA who joined the BJP a few years ago like a number of leaders from the community whom the BJP has courted in the last few years after Modi came to power in 2014.

Former Rajya Sabha MP Narendra Kashyap, belonging to the Nishad community, who moved to BJP from BSP in 2016, says there is a need to give ‘more representation” to Mallah in politics and the community members look towards the BJP with more anticipation.

“There are 100 assembly seats in the state, where the number of Mallah voters range from 15 thousand to 70 thousand and they can tilt the results either way. They are divided into 27 sub-castes and known as Kashyap in Western UP,” he said.

BJP has made sustained efforts to woo the community ever since the Modi government came to power at the Centre in 2014. During the 2015 Bihar assembly polls, Modi had picked up a Mallah youth Mukesh Sahni, who was famously referred as “son of Mallah”.

In 2016, Prime Minister Modi reached out to the community, launching 11 solar-powered “e-boats” in Varanasi and naming India’s new satellite NAVIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation) to honour the contribution of the “courageous boatmen (naavik). A number of Mallah leaders from SP and BSP defected to BJP before the 2017 assembly polls.

In the middle of 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the then BJP president Amit Shah promised to build an 80-feet tall statue of Nishadraj in Allahabad.

Mallahs fit into BJP's Hindutva politics as they have made consistent efforts to widen the party’s political base and make deep inroads in Most Backward Classes (MBCs). BJP has repeatedly referred to the pantheon of Kevatraj of the epic Ramayana and even during the August 5 groundbreaking ceremony of Ayodhya, VHP made reverential references to the Kevatraj’s connection with Lord Ram.

In UP, the most well known Mallah politician was bandit turned politician Phoolan Devi who, after being elected MP for the second time from Samajwadi Party, was shot dead outside her residence in Lutyens Delhi in daylight in July 2001. She had formed the Eklavya Sena to fight for the rights of the community.

The aspiration Mallahs have been seeking larger political representation for quite some time. In December 2016 a number of MPs and former MPs of the Nishad community from various parties held a protest in the national capital to seek due representation for Nishads or Kevats, seeking first a sub-quota within 27 percent OBC reservation for them and ultimately SC status.

In June 2019, the Yogi Adityanath government included Mallahs among 17 castes in the list of Scheduled Castes, a decision which was stayed by the Allahabad High Court.