Muscleman Mukhtar Ansari has opted out of the contest in Varanasi against Narendra Modi. If he had not, he would have suffered his second successive defeat in the lok Sabha election from the constituency.
He had lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party's Murli Manohar Joshi in 2009, though by a small margin of some 17,000 votes and after having managed a respectable vote share of around 27 per cent. This time he would have gone under by a far greater number. In 2009, he had deeply polarised the voters, a majority of whom viewed his candidature with alarm and concluded that his communal credentials were dangerous for the constituency. Therefore, while he garnered a large number of the minority votes as well as a few others, including the Dalits since he had contested on the Bahujan Samaj Party ticket, the majority community in retribution rallied behind Joshi and saw him through, although the voters were not too excited by the candidate they had to, by necessity, endorse.
Ansari still enjoys popularity among the minority community in Varanasi and those others whom he had cultivated when he was with the BSP. Part of his heft among the minorities comes from the fact that he has had a running feud with prominent BJP leaders and their associates, and is facing charges of murder and other relatively smaller offences. But two things have changed that may have persuaded him to quit the race. The first is the arrival of Narendra Modi as a contestant, and the second is his de-linking with the BSP. Mayawati had thrown him out of the party in 2010 on account of his many allegedly criminal activities, after which Ansari floated a new outfit, ironically named the Quami Ekta Dal. Although he went on to win the Mau Assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh in the 2012 election on his own strength, the changed political equations in Varanasi was less than friendly to him this time.
With the Dalits out of his fold, it would have been a near impossible task for him to take on Modi purely on the strength of the Muslim vote-bank — which itself could see divisions. And, even if Ansari were to have managed both the Dalits and the Muslims, he would still have stared at defeat. If the voters had turned him down as a BSP candidate, why would they have given him the green signal against Modi, given that the BJP's prime ministerial candidate has attracted a large chunk of new and first-time voters to his camp, besides consolidating the traditional votersIJ It was a lose-lose situation for him, and so he decided the past Thursday to recuse himself from the contest.
Naturally, these are not the reasons which Ansari has given for his withdrawal. What he has offered are on the expected lines: He quit because he did not want to divide the anti-Modi votes. So, where do these votes go nowIJ But before we understand that, we must bear in mind that the ‘anti-Modi' votes he has referred to are the minority votes. By conventional logic it must go to the strongest ‘secular' candidate in the fray. Is that the Congress's Ajay Rai or the Aam Aadmi Party's Arvind KejriwalIJ Or will it be the BSP candidateIJ Ansari has not yet clearly indicated his support to any of these. It will be difficult for him to back Rai, given his long-standing political and personal rivalry. Rai, like Ansari, is a sitting legislator and their areas of influence and work have often overlapped, leading to friction. Ansari can support Kejriwal, but he would be betting on the wrong horse and without any resulting benefit. Moreover, as an outsider and with little chance of influencing national politics, Kejriwal is unlikely to be in a position to later help Ansari out in the hurly-burly of local politics.
Ansari's departure may seem to further the aspirations of anti-Modi forces of having a ‘joint' candidate against the BJP leader. That may be an illusion. Mayawati, at least, is unlikely to back any name that comes from outside her party. There are no signs yet that the Samajwadi Party will support Rai's candidature. It will need a Triveni of the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, and that too in Varanasi, some distance away from Allahabad where the Sangam is, to counter Modi. That will leave Kejriwal out in the cold. If he joins the unholy grouping, he will lose whatever little credibility he is left with. If he does not, he will be wiped out from Varanasi.
There is no certainty that the dreamed-about grand alliance will work. While such a combine will certainly consolidate the anti-Modi votes in one kitty, the polarisation will also happen in the other direction, with pro-Modi voters among the forward castes and those among the Other Backward Classes coming together with a vengeance and voting in large numbers. We have seen such an instance in Muzaffarnagar on Thursday's polling, with a huge turnout in the constituency whose people have been deeply polarised since the riots happened a few months ago. Besides, polarisation in Varanasi will also greatly impact lok Sabha seats in and around that constituency, with the BJP turning out to be the eventual gainer.
Does this, therefore, mean that we can write off AnsariIJ Not really. The ‘don' is a colourful character in the politics of Uttar Pradesh and will remain relevant at least until he is put behind bars for good — and even then there is no saying what he can influence from under the nose of the prison authorities. From accounts available, Ansari's road to politics began when he joined a group run by gangster-contractors in the seventies and the eighties, which vied for Government projects. This was the official work. Other activities such as the extortion of ‘taxes' and ‘protection money’, went alongside, as meek and terrified officers did nothing to stop the illegalities. He was soon aligned with a particular faction and crossed swords with one of the most influential members of that time, Brijesh Singh. Ansari's and Brijesh Singh's gangs often engaged in violence on the streets, like the Mafia, leaving a trail of blood and destruction. By the mid-nineties, Ansari had had enough clout and money to enter politics. His area of operation encompassed the Mau-Ghazipur-Jaunpur belt.
Ansari's tiff with the BJP began after Brijesh Singh decided to back the party's leader, Krishnanand Rai, in an election against Ansari's brother. The brother lost and the enmity deepened because Ansari believed he began to lose out on lucrative Government contracts thereafter, since they allegedly went to Brijesh Singh. Meanwhile, Ansari landed in jail on account of various offences, and during his incarceration, Krishnanand Rai was gunned down. The finger of suspicion pointed to Ansari. As the noose around him continued to tighten, Ansari left no opportunity to reiterate his credentials as a leader of the minority community who faced the wrath of the ‘upper castes and Hindus'. It suits his image that he is now facing charges in connection with the murder of a BJP leader.