The powerful leader has opened new vistas by deserting the BJP and favouring the SP

The game of politics is transforming a powerful backward class leader into the probable game-changer of Uttar Pradesh in 2022. Swami Prasad Maurya’s time under the sun is now after he took two simple steps; one of breaking away from the BJP and, the other, of promising to join the Samajwadi Party on January 14. There is just one question this development poses. It is not about how the BJP will attempt to recover from the obvious setback. It is whether politics in Uttar Pradesh is ready to accept cohesion of backward classes to electorally take on a party that wields religious ideology to blur caste identities. At least on paper, Maurya’s action has the potential of aligning many OBCs with the Yadav-dominated Samajwadi Party. He is a leader with a powerful mass base. Mauryas, part of the Kushwahas, along with Yadavs, Lodhs and Kurmis, are among the top OBC communities in terms of numbers. His exit from the BJP also sends a message across the OBC spectrum at a time when the two big rivals, BJP and SP, are busy stitching up alliances with smaller OBC communities. The focus, however, remains on the Samajwadi Party’s ability to make an inclusive alliance between Yadavs and non-Yadav OBCs work. Leader Akhilesh Yadav is eager to expand SP’s caste base beyond Yadavs and Muslims. Mere intent is not enough till he is willing to give non-Yadav communities representation in the top echelons of his party’s hierarchy.

Were that to happen — though there is not much time left to stitch a comprehensive social alliance — it would be for the first time in the post-Mandal era that all backward classes would stand on a common platform. For the coming elections, that would mean ensuring a full transfer of votes among the new allies — a tall order, given their differences at the grassroots. How these are overcome depends on how strong an anti-BJP plank they forge. Till Maurya came into the picture, Akhilesh was treading a familiar but traditional path of alliances. He was ensuring a big gain at the expense of the Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party. He conveyed to Muslims to back him to the hilt in order not to split their vote. He signed pacts with Rashtriya Lok Dal, a faction of Apna Dal, Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party led by Om Prakash Rajbhar, Mahan Dal and Janwadi Party (Socialist). Akhilesh is giving his alliance a national tone by teaming up with Sharad Pawar’s NCP and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (both will contest a seat each). However, it is only with Maurya that he can, for the first time since 2014, directly gain at BJP’s expense. That is why, perhaps, Maurya and a couple of BJP MLAs who also wish to quit the party, share Akhilesh’s social justice narrative and blame BJP not for religious polarisation but the neglect of “Dalits, backward classes, farmers, unemployed youth and small and medium traders”.