With the urban local bodies’ elections over, the Samajwadi Party is all set to focus its attention on mobilisation and consolidation of the Other Backward Class (OBC) vote bank.
The SP is particularly concerned over the poaching of its Muslim vote bank by the Hyderabad-based All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in the urban local bodies elections.
The AIMIM, led by Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, has not only made a mark in the urban local bodies polls in Uttar Pradesh but has also dealt a major blow to the SP by denting its support base among the minority community.
The AIMIM has five chairpersons in UP’s nagar palika parishads and 75 corporators in municipal corporations, with its mayoral candidate in Meerut ended up as runner-up by finishing second after the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate.
The SP had initiated the move for mobilisation of the caste based vote bank earlier this year by targeting a verse in Ramcharitmanas, claiming it to be derogatory for the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Classes. Later, the party shifted its focus on caste based census.
Sources in the SP said, “The 2024 Lok Sabha election is less than a year away and the mobilisation of the OBC vote bank is the only potent tool to fight the hegemony of the Hindutva ideology aggressively pursued by the BJP.”
The BJP has made consistent inroads in the OBC vote bank in the last two Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and 2019 and two UP assembly elections in 2017 and 2022 and the SP faces a challenging task of protecting its political turf in UP during the 2024 Lok Sabha election.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had on April 3 attended a meeting of 14 opposition parties on the theme ‘Social justice, the road ahead’.
The meeting was organised by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin in a show of strength amid ongoing efforts to stitch up various political combinations.
Besides the SP, more and more opposition parties, including the Congress, have joined the bandwagon in recent weeks to demand a national caste census as a new ‘Mandal’ politics to challenge the BJP.
During the Karnataka state assembly election campaign, Rahul Gandhi had also advocated caste based census. He had also pointed out that only seven per cent of secretaries in the Central government were from the SC, ST and OBC communities.
The Congress focus on caste politics is seen as counter offensive in the backdrop of the BJP’s offensive against Rahul Gandhi, accusing the Congress leader of insulting or defaming OBCs or other backward castes through his comment on the ‘Modi’ surname. That remark led to conviction of Rahul Gandhi in a criminal defamation case and his disqualification from the membership of the Lok Sabha.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanding the release of the caste data collected in the 2011 Socio-Economic Caste Census by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, abolition of the 50 per cent ceiling on reservations and conduct of national caste census.
The last caste based census was held during colonial rule in 1931 and published in 1932. The data about OBC population was extrapolated by the Mandal Commission to recommend 27 per cent reservation for the OBCs which was implemented in 1990 by the then Prime Minister VP Singh.
Later in 2011, the UPA government conducted a Socio-Economic Caste Census in 2011, which was expected to provide comprehensive data. Its report was not made public by the UPA government. The Narendra Modi government has used the data for implementing myriad welfare schemes, but has not made the data public.
