UP polls 2017: BJP pulls all stops in the battle for Bundelkhand

Just a day ago, Congress leader Raj Babbar could not make it to a massive rally organised in Lalitpur’s Mehrauni constituency as the former actor’s helicopter developed a snag. The party wanted to make up for that miss with another star-powered rally, this time headlined by Azharuddin, on the last day of campaigning.       

   

BJP, meanwhile, went all out. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh addressed a big rally in Jhansi city last Saturday and returned to Lalitpur, about 100 km from Jhansi, on Tuesday for the last attempt at convincing the voters, asking them to press the lotus button on Thursday.

A result-oriented politician from Bundelkhand, a region which comprises parts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, Uma Bharti crisscrossed the region over the last few days. Bijoli, on the Jhansi highway, played host to Bharti late into Monday night, as hundreds of locals joined in to listen to her much past their dinner time amid loud chants of "Ramjanmbhoomi" and "Jai Sriram". Bharti had won the 2014 Lok Sabha polls from the Jhansi district constituency, and she’s using that victory fully, during what is being referred to as the yuddh (war) for Uttar Pradesh.

Bijoli was the last stop of the day for the leader, after a series of rallies from Jhansi to Lalitpur, Maurani to Babina, where she listed demonetisation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a bloodless economic revolution — one that distinguished him from the likes of Marx and Lenin. Bharti was set to be back again on Tuesday, appealing to Bundelkhand voters for the last time at Banda. She’s been reiterating her promise of a separate state of Bundelkhand, a top demand of the people here in the backdrop of the recent drought, crop damage and hundreds of farmers’ suicide over piling loans and debt.    

As star campaigners move on to the final sets of speeches and rallies for the remaining three phases of polls in the state, administrators in Bundelkhand are believed to be spending sleepless nights as the actual process of voting gets underway. At the office of the district magistrate of Lalitpur, Rupesh Kumar, who has attended one urgent meeting after another in the past few days, reflected on the charged atmosphere. 

Another officer told Business Standard, "All we want is a fair poll... How can we say whether there’s a wave or not. That’s for the people to assess." However, he is hoping that voting crosses last time’s 70 per cent in Lalitpur, one of the poorest in the state with a mainly rural population and farming as the only mode of livelihood.      

Administrators claimed that there has been development work in Bundelkhand, but many NGOs working in the area pointed out that there have been plans to address issues but the execution has been slow. They denied that demonetisation had adversely impacted the people. Many locals, that this newspaper spoke to, argued that, ultimately, political parties would win votes on the caste card and not so much on development work in UP. 

Since nobody wanted to leave anything to chance, local leaders booked airtime on private FM radio channels, which had day-long dedicated election bulletins by candidates and their supporters, repeating their promises. With no physical war room possible as leaders have been either on the state's roads or airborne for weeks, FM radio has become handy even as local politicians have gotten down to door-to-door campaigning.