The ongoing assembly elections enters the last and most crucial phase in eastern UP as this region is identified with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and competitive caste-based identity politics pursued by Samajwadi Party and redefined caste-based politics by the BJP.
Voting for the seventh and final round will be held in Varanasi and its eight adjoining districts on March 7. The 54 Assembly seats going to polls in this phase are Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Bhadohi and Sonbhadra.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a roadshow in different localities of Varanasi on Friday and will address a rally in Khajuri village of the district on March 5. The roadshow covered three Assembly constituencies of Cantonment, Varanasi North and Varanasi South.
Earlier, prominent leaders of opposition parties - Congress and Samajwadi Party and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee have also campaigned in the pilgrim city - the nerve centre of the grand finale. Strength of the old and new allies of Samajwadi Party will be on test and its new formula where it has borrowed a leaf from the BJP and forged alliance with small caste-based parties will be under scrutiny. The SP has challenged the non-Yadav OBC plank of the BJP as four non-Yadav OBCs ministers in the Yogi government deserted the BJP and joined the SP just ahead of the polls. The four ministers are Swami Prasad Maurya, Dara Singh Chauhan, Om Prakash Rajbhar and Dharm Singh Saini.
Though Samajwadi party has pinned hopes with the new alliances and its chief Akhilesh Yadav has gone to the extent of claiming to win 400 of the total 403 seats, political experts are sceptical.
Akhilesh has nominated four SP candidates in Varanasi and left four others to allies, Apna Dal (Kamerwadi) headed by Anupriya’s mother Krishna Patel and two for Rajbhar’s SBSP. “Its too late in the day for the SP to forge alliances with small parties. These parties lack proven leadership in electoral politics of UP and there is no visible mechanism that these parties can transfer votes to other party candidates in the election,’’said a political analyst.
In 2017 state elections, the BJP and its ally riding the ‘Modi wave’ had won in all eight Assembly segments of Varanasi and so was the case in the majority seats in neighbouring districts. However, changing caste equation and aggressive mobilisation of Muslims by Samajwadi Party has ensured that the contest will not remain one-sided this time.
BJP’s allies Apna Dal (Sonelal) and Nishad Party and Akhilesh Yadav’s new friends Apna Dal (K), Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) of Om Prakash Rajbhar and others would have to play an important role to tilt the balance in favour of their groupings. Reports suggested that the SP and other parties are trying to dent the BJP’s support base among Brahmins by playing up their reported unhappiness with the saffron party.
A strong poll battle is likely in neighbouring Mirzapur and Jaunpur too where the BJP had won hands down last time. Besides Varanasi, the last round of polling would also cover Azamgarh and Vindhyachal regions.