Uttar Pradesh’s political landscape, never an easy one to navigate is shifting and its impact on the forthcoming elections might be definitive given that the state sends the largest chunk of representatives to the Lok Sabha (80). In this shift, all political parties are staring at a loss of traditional support bases.
The state’s 21% Dalits have customarily responded to Mayawati’s rallying cry. Yet last year’s Assembly elections in Delhi, the just born Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won most of the reserved seats netting 29% of the Dalit vote, relegating the BSP’s vote share to just 8.9%, after the BJP’s share of 28.8% and the Congress share of 25%.
And Delhi is not too far, as the ripple effects of what happens in Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar (part of the NCR) might extend to other parts of the state as well.
This worry is so real for the BSP chief Mayawati that she has been mentioning in all her rallies that AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal is a Vaishya- a caste that has nothing in common with the Dalits. The party’s decision to contest all Parliamentary seats in the state, with no alliances, also stems from the recognition of AAP as serious contender which will draw votes away from all political parties- a split which could benefit the BSP.
The state’s 18% Muslim voters are decidedly angry with the Samajwadi Party (SP) which they see as having failed on key poll promises such as the release of innocent Muslim youths jailed in the name of terror and the party’s inept handling of communal violence and riots that have marked two years of Akhilesh Yadav’s rule. The Muslim voter is known to make his anger heard clearly.
Thus in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections when Kalyan Singh threw in his lot with the SP, the backlash from the community was so severe that not a single Muslim candidate propped by the SP won. The party garnered just 30% of the Muslim vote but when it discarded Kalyan Singh, 43% of the community’s votes came to it in the 2012 Vidhan Sabha elections.
However the Muslim vote which had shifted to the Congress in 2009, might be headed elsewhere this time as the party’s state organisational unit has remained unimpressive. The candidate of preference would thus be whoever is best placed to beat the BJP. It is a clear realisation of this fact that had prompted party president Rajnath Singh to declare that the BJP would seek forgiveness from Muslims. As for the AAP, it might be considered as an option but the failed Delhi experiment is likely to weigh as much on the mind of the Muslim electorate, as on others.
Muslim and Jat voters hold the key in Western Uttar Pradesh which has 18 Lok Sabha constituencies. The latter has traditionally sided with the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) which has five MPs from the region. The Muzaffarnagar riots have torn apart Muslims and Jats. The BJP had hoped to capitalise on a polarisation of the Hindu vote post the riots- which it had a hand in engineering.
The Congress by notifying reservation for Jats and then tying up with the RLD, has muddied the equations. Interestingly RLD has not fielded a single Muslim candidate from the eight seats it is fighting on, leaving it to the Congress to put up Muslims in five seats and thereby denting the BJP’s prospects still further. Given Muslim anger with the SP, and the absence of other ‘secular’ alternatives the Congress might just emerge a major gainer in the area.
The Muslim factor will also play up starkly in 12 seats of eastern UP- including Azamgarh and Bahraich. Now that Narendra Modi’s candidature has been announced from Varanasi which also lies in the state’s eastern belt, a polarisation of votes across the region can well be expected. The possible candidature of Mulayam Singh Yadav from Azamgarh—from where most of the arrests post the Batla House encounter were made, will further stir the mix and become a counter point to Modi’s influence in the region.
These are however early days. The state’s voter has been known to be a sly being—not really showing his cards before polling day. And in that, he could stump the most carefully crafted calculations.
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