Mayawati enjoys unquestionable support among Dalits. It will be erroneous to write off the BSP as the party has a committed vote bank of over 20 per cent
The election scenario in Uttar Pradesh is hotting up. Leaders of major political parties are out wooing the voters. Akhilesh Yadav has started his Vijay Yatra claiming that people have already written a requiem for the BJP and that the return of the Samajwadi Party is inevitable. Priyanka Gandhi is on a whirlwind tour of Uttar Pradesh, meeting people, exhorting party workers to unite and project Congress as the only alternative BJP in UP as well as at the national level.
On the other hand, BJP leaders, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are holding meetings, inaugurating projects, and stressing the importance of double-engine government. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is injecting the dose of Hindutva with freebies. The scheme of free ration among the poor has been extended till March 2022 (by the time elections will be over) and also released money to the accounts for parents of school-going children to purchase uniforms. This way, every parent whose ward is studying in a state-run or government-aided school will get Rs 1,100.
The aggressiveness in the election campaign shows the desperation among the parties to do well in this politically sensitive state. This is clear that the future of these parties is at stake and the Uttar Pradesh elections will decide the role of these parties in national politics.
The BJP leadership has accepted this stark reality as Amit Shah during his recent rally said that if you want to bring Modi back to power in 2024 vote for Yogi in Uttar Pradesh in 2022. Though he gave this statement in Varanasi, Modi's parliamentary constituency, it shows how much the future of BJP hinges on the result of the Uttar Pradesh elections. The Modi government is bound to lose the political command if BJP loses Uttar Pradesh. The barbs would be more stringent and every decision of the Prime Minister would be put under the microscope. The Opposition is already questioning BJP's losses in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka bye-elections and a further loss in Uttar Pradesh would enthuse the opposition and give them hope that they can topple BJP in the 2024 general elections.
The scenario would not be different for Priyanka Gandhi and Congress. The leadership quotient of the sister-brother duo is at stake in Uttar Pradesh. The defeat of the party in the last decade and a half has led to erosion of the party's base. Dalits, Muslims, and upper castes who were the quintessential support group of Congress till the mid-80s gradually shifted to the Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party, and BJP, respectively. Despite the Congress-led UPA government ruling India for 10 years till 2014, the party's reliance on the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party to run the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre allowed these parties to gain in Uttar Pradesh at the expense of Congress. In the passage of time, Congress lost mass support, which it once enjoyed in Uttar Pradesh.
In this scenario, it will be a Herculean task for Priyanka Gandhi to revive the party. In the last assembly elections, Congress had won just seven seats in the 403-member assembly but now is left with only five members. In the present scenario, even winning two dozen seats would be a great victory for the party. This is an onerous task and if Priyanka fails to achieve the result, questions would be raised about her leadership quality. The voice of discontent would start emanating within the party demanding a change in leadership.
Similar is the case with Samajwadi Party. Akhilesh knows that a loss in this assembly election would further push him to oblivion and questions would be raised over his leadership. The Samajwadi Party had lost the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections and 2017 assembly elections which it contested under Akhilesh's leadership. In 2017 the SP had forged an alliance with Congress and in 2019 the party contested as an ally with BSP. The experiment failed and this time Akhilesh has decided to go with small parties instead of allying with big political players.
The silhouette of Akhilesh's plan was visible in a rally in Ambedkar nagar where two senior BSP leaders - Ram Achal Rajbhar and Lalji Verma - joined the Samajwadi Party. In that rally, Akhilesh gave a call to merge B R Ambedkar and Ram Manohar Lohia. The subtle declaration shows an attempt of the Samajwadi Party to turn a new leaf in caste-based identity politics with a desperate attempt to forge a Dalit-backward social coalition.
This is not the first time that such an experiment has been tried in Uttar Pradesh. Earlier, it was BSP's patriarch Kashi Ram who carved out a larger Dalit-Bahujan coalition of Scheduled Castes and OBCs. The experiment yielded results in 1993 when the Samajwadi Party and BSP came together to defeat BJP at the peak of the Ram Temple movement to form a coalition government. 'Mile Mulayam Kanshi Ram, hawameinudgaye Jai Shri Ram' was the common refrain at that time. In 2007, through her focus on Sarva Samaj, Mayawati succeeded in enlisting the support of sections of the extremely backward castes and won a clear majority on her own. The political pundits called it the magic of social engineering where the Dalits stitched an alliance with backward and upper castes.
In this election, Akhilesh Yadav wants to revive the same magic and has given a call for the coming together of the followers of Dr. BR Ambedkar and Ram Manohar Lohia to protect the honour of the Dalits and OBCs and ensuring their due representation in the power structure. This declaration is made with a design because Other Backward Castes (OBCs) are bound to play an important role as they played in the 2019 general elections and 2017 assembly elections. BJP came to power only because it was able to garner good support of OBC because it stitched effective alliances with small but caste-based parties. Samajwadi Party has thrived largely on a Yadav-Muslim core base. When non-Yadav OBCs supported M-Y social equation, Akhilesh came to power in the 2012 assembly elections. Since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the non-Yadav OBCs have veered around to the BJP and Akhilesh's slogan is an attempt to bring this OBC vote bank back to the SP umbrella.
In this edition of the election, Akhilesh has already forged an alliance with small parties like Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) of Om Prakash Rajbhar. It is also in alliance with Mahan Dal led by Keshav Prasad Maurya and in western UP it has declared its alliance with Rashtriya Lok Dal.
About BSP, no one questions the support Mayawati enjoys among Dalits. It will be erroneous to write off the Bahujan Samaj Party as the party has committed a vote bank of over 20 per cent. The party has successfully carried out Brahmin Sammelans across the state but the way senior party leaders, including legislators, have left BSP and joined Samajwadi Party reflects the eroding base. Mayawati is yet to start the campaign, once she starts moving from one district to another the groundswell in her support cannot be ruled out.
(The writer is Political Editor, The Pioneer, Lucknow. The views expressed are personal.)