With just two rounds to go, UP battle tantalizing
The last two phases of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election scheduled to be held on March 4 and 8 are crucial for many reasons. The first is that the rounds comprise Prime Minister Narendra Modi's lok Sabha constituency, Varanasi. All eyes are on the performance of the Bharatiya Janata Party there. The Samajwadi Party has had a good hold in the Assembly constituencies that fall in the region, but the Prime Minister's personal popularity is expected to come into play this time around. Modi will be carpet-bombing his constituency for three days beginning on Saturday and winding up the campaign with a massive rally on Monday. The Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance is equally active. The partners will be holding a mega show on March 4. The idea is to not just win the eight seats there but also embarrass the Prime Minister in the process. The coalition has roped in students from Banaras Hindu University to add muscle to their effort. The second reason why the last two rounds are critical for all parties is that a big chunk — 89 seats — is up for grabs. Eastern Uttar Pradesh has its own dynamics, different vastly from that of the western region which has already voted. Issues of poverty, health and education are uppermost in the people's mind. As many as 28 districts in the region have a per capita income that is nearly half of that of western Uttar Pradesh, and there are far fewer industries and sustainable job opportunities. The third reason is that caste comes into play more dominantly in the eastern region than in the west. While the minority factor is a key element in western Uttar Pradesh (along with the Jat issue), in the eastern belt, it's caste — Other Backward Classes and the Scheduled Castes. The BJP is confident of the support of the non-Yadav caste group and is also banking on the backing of the non-Jatavs. In the Ballia-Ghazipur belt, for instance, the party has aggressively pushed for a ‘rainbow' coalition of non-Yadav OBC and non-Jatav votes, sending the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in a tizzy.
On the other hand, the Samajwadi Party (SP) hopes to mop up the minority votes, hold on to the Yadav votes and benefit from the Congress's core voters. But it is indeed difficult to predict which way the voters in eastern Uttar Pradesh will swing. If one considers all of the eastern region of the State, there are 150 seats or so. They have gone differently in the last two Assembly elections. In 2007, the voters preferred Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party; the BSP got close to 80 seats. Five years down the line, they were disillusioned and switched their preference to the Samajwadi Party, given it 85 seats ( the sweep is evident from this one example — in Jaunpur, the SP won seven of the nine seats); the BSP tally whittled down to just 25. In the 2014 lok Sabha election, of course, the region, as the rest of the state, voted overwhelmingly for the BJP, reducing the BSP to ashes and the SP to a non-entity.