The importance of being small in UP

The political ground in UP is turning increasingly slippery. The SP and BSP woo Brahmins, and BJP gets Mandalised.

It's rather a situation of the tail wagging the dog in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.

Om Prakash Rajbhar of the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) rejects feelers from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and even refuses to answer a phone call from party president J P Nadda. Shortly after losing Lotan Ram - a prominent leader of the Nishad (fishermen) community, Samajwadi Party (SP) president makes an urgent dash to Unnao to garland the statue of community icon Manohar Lal. Bihar NDA partner Mukesh Sahni of the Vikassheel Insaan Party decides to independently contest 165 assembly seats in UP to avenge the Yogi Adityanath administration's decision to detain him at the Varanasi airport and refuse him permission to install a bust of bandit queen and Mallah leader Phoolan Devi. Leaders of other smaller parties and groups, including the Mahaan Dal, Anjaan Party, Apna Dal or the Jansatta Party, are flexing their muscles too, demanding their pound of flesh in return for their support to the bigger political players.

Each subsequent Assembly election in UP has seen a compounding rise in the number of contesting parties - from 111 unrecognised political parties in 2007 to 202 such parties in 2012 and 288 parties in 2017. By all accounts, the number of contesting parties will witness a significant rise again in 2022. The politics of India's most populous state has been getting increasingly splintered.

Also Read — Amit Shah sharpens Hindutva agenda ahead of UP polls

Crossing ideological barriers

Ahead of the Assembly elections, political ideologies are apparently getting thrown by the wayside. The SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which owe their existence to movements against the Hindu hierarchical order, are seemingly turning religious. The BSP cadres led by Satish Chandra Mishra were lately seen chanting mantras and pouring hundreds of litres of milk in the River Saryu in the holy city of Ayodhya. Seeking a repeat of the party's experiment of 2007 in stitching together a "rainbow coalition" of Brahmins and Dalits, the BSP will be organising similar "Brahmin Conferences" at other religious centres, including Mathura and Varanasi.

On the other hand, the SP has launched a plan to install statues and conduct "yatras" to commemorate Lord Parashuram, an icon amongst the Brahmin community, who was said to have fought the Rajputs. At the other end of the spectrum, the BJP - at the risk of diluting the "Hindutva" plank - is seemingly getting "Mandalised". The 27 per cent Other Backward Caste (OBC) quota in Medical and Dental colleges would have come anyway through a court order sooner or later. Still, the timing of the Union Government's announcement in the matter is significant. In the reshuffle of the Union Cabinet this month, seven MPs from UP were inducted as ministers of state - six of them belonging to backward castes. The sum and substance of all this: confusion prevails in both the BJP and non-BJP formations. The political ground in UP is turning increasingly slippery.

Anti-incumbency

Incumbent governments since 2007 have not got a repeat term in UP. But this is hardly the only reason that the BJP or the Yogi Adityanath government is on the backfoot. The Covid mismanagement; the situation of the spiralling unemployment; the custodial deaths and encounter killings of persons accused of even petty crimes; the placement of Rajputs (the chief minister's caste) at critical positions of the state apparatus and the BJP's failure to address concerns of farmers - these are among factors leading to the anti-incumbency wave against the Adityanath government. What has complicated matters is the much talked about Narendra Modi - Amit Shah versus Adityanath tussle. Adityanath, party insiders say, wants to distribute 175 party tickets, while the party central leadership's position is that he should have a say in deciding no more than 75 seats. The messaging from the central BJP leadership is that - even if the BJP does get the majority in 2022 - Adityanath will not be the natural choice for the chief ministership.

Notwithstanding Prime Minister Modi's fulsome endorsement on the performance of the Adityanath government at this month's rally at Varanasi, the disagreements have far from resolved. While the central BJP leadership has been pressing for the expansion of the UP Cabinet since May, Adityanath has not yielded. Four vacancies arose in the state Assembly's upper house in July, and names of new incumbents have also been forwarded to the chief minister. But Adityanath has kept this issue pending as well. Given the situation of the Modi-Yogi standoff, the Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangha (RSS), the parent body of the BJP, has stationed its third-highest functionary, Dattatreya Hosabale, in Lucknow for the period of the elections.

The endgame

The BJP is in turmoil, while the Opposition space is crowded and divided. The entry of players such as AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi has complicated matters, while the Congress, although a minor player in UP, is likely to eat into the so-called "secular vote bank". Therefore, the efficacy of the poll strategy of a party or formation will largely determine the poll outcome.

Government formation in UP becomes possible for whichever party or formation securing over 30 per cent of the state's vote share. In the 2017 Assembly elections, both the BSP and the SP performed miserably but still managed to secure a 20-22 per cent vote share against 39 per cent of the BJP. For the BJP to be displaced from power, either the SP or the BSP will need to increase its vote share by ten percentage points.

Conversely, the BJP vote share will need to come down by at least 10-12 per cent points. In the 2014 and 2019 parliamentary elections and the 2017 Assembly elections, the BJP scored big by consolidating in its favour the non-Yadav votes of the SP and the non-Jatav votes of the BSP. In the last four and a half years, the Adityanath government's focus has been on love jihad, triple talaq or the Ram temple construction and not on Dalit empowerment. One factor alone will determine whether the BJP does get a second successive term of office: The preferences of the smaller sub-castes and farmers groups on voting day.

(The writer is a journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.