With the resignation of two ministers and several MLAs belonging to Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Dalit communities from the Bharatiya Janata Party, the caste based politics or the politics of social justice seems to have resurrected itself in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. The caste based politics threatens to upstage the Hindutva politics. Even as the Hindutva icon Yogi Adityanath is chief minister for the last five years, the caste politics as of now appears to be the dominant agenda of the public discourse in Uttar Pradesh.
In UP, political migration is the flavour of the season ahead of the elections for the last three decades since 1989, heralding the decline of the Congress and rise of Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi party and the Bharatiya Janata Party. In 2022, the spate of resignations from the BJP may have different political consequences as it raises the question mark over the invincibility of the social coalition forged by the BJP in 2014 comprising upper caste, non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits. The BJP, in subsequent assembly elections in 2017 and 2019 and Lok Sabha elections, reaped rich political dividends
The Samajwadi Party camp is jubilant over the resignations from the BJP in the last 48 hours and confident of consolidating its hold on the OBC vote bank with most of the communities of this category coming under its umbrella. In fact the SP has no role in the troubled state of affairs within the BJP. The BJP, barring Swami Prasad Maurya, has already decided to deny tickets to those MLAs who have resigned from the party. The BJP MLAs and ministers, in a preemptive strike at the party and for ensuring safe haven in Samajwadi Party, decided to desert the ruling party.
The BJP is likely to deny ticket to as many as one-third of its sitting MLAs.
Akhilesh Yadav had contested the 2017 UP election on the development plank with the tagline of ‘Kaam bolta hai’. This time, compelled by the realpolitik and after three successive defeats in 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections and 2017 UP assembly elections, he has shed all inhibitions and joined the caste bandwagon. He started the shift in political line from demanding caste based census and giving the slogan of 85 Vs 15, indicating that the OBCs were 85 per cent of the population while the upper caste were in minuscule minority of 15 per cent.
After that he started scouting for new allies --the caste based small political parties -- and emphatically asserting that his party will never have any truck with big parties like Congress as it never helps his party. He has also patched up with his estranged uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav to consolidate the backward caste vote bank.
Political observers point out that ever since the advent of the Narendra Modi era in the BJP, the saffron party has adopted the model of organic growth by encouraging defections of political leaders from the dominant parties and turning itself into a safe haven for turncoats from different parties in Parliament as well as in many state assemblies, particularly in West Bengal, Maharashtra and UP. In UP however, the BJP never paid attention on the need for formulating a contingency plan for dealing with a crisis like situation if these leaders deserted the party at the crucial juncture of election, thus creating bad optics for the party and strengthening its rival camp.
The BJP leadership is least alarmed by the spate of resignations. “The jubilation in Samajwadi Party is short lived. You will soon see the SP grappling with the rebellion from its own leaders if they are denied party tickets to accommodate the turncoats from the BJP and other parties and also the myriad allies with whom the SP has forged alliance,” said a political analyst.