With the electoral competition intensifying between the Bharatiya Janata Party and Samajwadi Party, the non-Yadav Other Backward Classes has emerged as a distinct voting class in Uttar Pradesh. The battle for non-Yadav OBC vote bank has ensured that in the coming year this voting bloc will be a significant player in electoral politics of UP.
The BJP in 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections and 2017 UP assembly elections drew rich political dividends as it forged a new social coalition of non-Yadav OBCs, non-Jatav Dalit communities and upper castes. The BJP has been stung by a spate of resignations, including by three non-Yadav OBC ministers Swami Prasad Maurya, Dara Singh Chauhan and Dharam Singh Saini.
The three ministers of the Yogi Adityanath council of ministers along with a couple of other non-Yadav OBC MLAs of BJP also joined the SP. This development has placed the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP, a serious contender for the throne in Lucknow in a good position. The SP, keen to shed its Muslim-Yadav tag, has increased the representation of non-Yadav OBCs in the ticket distribution for the assembly seats.
Though the BJP was able to draw political dividends from this vote bank in 2014 for the first time, the foundation for this vote bank was laid by BJP Chief Minister Rajnath Singh in 2001.
On June 28, 2001, then Chief Minister Rajnath Singh had constituted a social justice committee headed by then cabinet minister Hukum Singh to devise an equitable policy for distribution of reservations. The committee recommended quota within quota for the non-Yadav OBCs. The total quota for OBCs is 27 per cent. Both Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party had then vehemently opposed the idea.
The committee recommended that dominant OBC castes like Yadavs, Kurmi and Lodh be slotted in the first category and assigned five per cent reservation. Eight castes, Sonar, Jat, Kurmi, Giri, Gurjar, Gosain, Lodh and Kamboj, were declared more backward and allotted nine per cent reservation, whereas 70 castes, including Kushwaha, Kashyap, Nishad, Koeri, Teli, Saini, etc were classified as most backward and given 14 per cent reservation. The BJP, however, failed to reap any political dividend in 2002 UP assembly elections and the party finished third in the polls. Mayawati headed the next BSP-BJP coalition government and it scrapped the report.
The electoral contest in UP has remained triangular for the last two decades, with the BJP, the BSP and the SP being the principal power contenders. These political parties enjoy strong support among the upper castes, scheduled castes and Yadav-Muslim communities, respectively. Voters who comprise a strong social support base of political parties are identified as partisan voters. Such voters play an indispensable role in the surge and decline of political parties, but they do not decide victory in elections.
This is decided by the less partisan voters who do not remain aligned with any political party. In UP, such voters are the non-Yadav OBCs. Till the 2012 UP assembly elections, non-Yadav OBCs decided electoral outcomes heavily due to their alignment largely with the SP and BSP and a small section with the BJP.
The BJP in UP has worked hard to mobilise the non-Yadav OBC voters since 2014 Lok Sabha elections and reaped rich political dividends. In fact BJP has built a coalition of upper castes, non-Yadav OBCs, and non-Jatav SCs in the state. This new social coalition has broken all previous records and the BJP has not only been able to win the highest number of seats, but also increase its vote share. In the upcoming assembly election, it appears that a serious attempt has been made by the SP to dent this social coalition.