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Assembly elections: Will the lotus bloom again in UP?

Halfway through the elections, Radhika Ramaseshan discovers a surge for the BJP

BJP, UP
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BJP, UP
Radhika Ramaseshan
Last Updated : Feb 27 2017 | 4:05 AM IST
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Two trends are being confirmed halfway into the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. First, the surge for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has corresponded to the fall in the prospects of the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance. The coalition is floundering as the underestimated Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has emerged as the BJP’s direct opponent in several seats. Second, note bandi (demonetisation) has faded away from popular consciousness, to be replaced by divisive subjects such as alleged discrimination in power supply during religious festivals. 

A BJP leader said, “Our data show that of the 73 seats in the first phase, as many as 55 would go to the BSP because of the Muslim-Dalit combination. Muslims gravitated towards the Congress-SP alliance instead of the BSP, and did the BJP a big favour.” 

“If  Hindus had become vocal about the BJP,   Muslims would have started their calculations over whether the BSP was a more viable choice than the SP. Muslims thought the Hindu voters were indifferent. They rooted for the alliance,” the leader pointed out.

In Kunari Bangla village of Bahraich district, Shiv Kumar Shukla, a farmer, explained. “If we were articulate, there would be a counter reaction from the Muslims because they see a vote for the BJP as a vote for (Narendra) Modi. I have to co-exist with Muslims but I know the BJP must win UP, so that Modi’s stature remains undiminished.”   

The zeal to protect the “Hindu” identity was so pervasive that in Ayodhya, BJP workers shed their resentment over the choice of a candidate to avenge the defeat of the party’s nominee by the SP in the previous Assembly polls in 2012. Lalu Singh, a legislator, was trounced by a young Tej Narain Pawan Pandey. Although Singh subsequently won the Lok Sabha election from Faizabad, his drubbing continued to rankle. “The lotus wilted that day for us. We have to make it bloom again,” said confectionery vendor Jitender Modanwal. 

Although the BJP chose a fresh defector from the BSP, Ved Prakash Gupta, as its Ayodhya nominee, party workers were back on their feet after an initial outpouring of dissent. “The candidate has not gone out of his way to connect with us but, for us, restoring the BJP’s prestige in Ayodhya is more important than teaching Gupta a lesson,” a party worker said.

Enmeshed in the “Hindu identity” are caste strands. Officially, the BJP claims caste is not germane to its electoral blueprint. Scratch the surface and the affectations vanish. Chandramohan, a ‘pracharak’ (propagandist) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), conceded a major element in the BJP plan was winning over backward castes. The strategy precluded working on the Yadavs and the Jatavs, bracketed with the well-off castes that are aligned with the SP and the BSP. 

“Our social management began on the day we appointed Keshav Prasad Maurya the UP BJP president. Those castes that never found a place under the political sun flocked to us. We reciprocated by inducting one person from each of these castes to booth committees,” explained Chandramohan, who is based in Allahabad.

The BJP’s outreach to stragglers did not end here. UP topped the charts of priority states when the Centre launched the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana for cooking gas connections to households below the poverty line. Chaudhury Ravi Verma, who heads the BJP’s UP farmers’ wing and is based in Bahraich, said the directive from Delhi was to identify the most backward castes before connections were given. 

The Faizabad MP of the BJP, Lalu Singh, said when he supervised implementation, he quickly figured out that administrators belonging to the less well-off castes should be entrusted with the distribution, so that connections went to the targeted beneficiaries. Faizabad set a record of sorts by giving out 85,000 connections. The same criteria were adopted when the BJP oversaw the opening of bank accounts under the Jan-Dhan Yojana in UP.

Conflating the “Hindu identity” with “minority appeasement” of the sort allegedly pursued by the Akhilesh Yadav government formed the other theme in the BJP’s discourse. The strategy worked, ironically most effectively on the Yadavs because some of them have been drawn to the BJP on the ‘Hindu versus Muslim’ rhetoric. In Yadav-populated seats, a ballpark estimate was that 20-30 per cent had left or would leave the SP to vote the BJP. 

In Bahraich’s Bashirganj, where large enclosures doubling as cattle sheds occupy more space than the cluttered houses of the Yadavs, Jitender Pratap,  a diploma holder in networking studies, said he would vote the BJP because of Modi and for the “sense of security” it gave him. “We are enclosed on all sides by Muslim settlements. They have attacked us on occasion but we gave it back. All this happened when the SP was in power,” said Pratap. 

Modi’s popularity ratings are so high in these parts, compared with places in west UP where the fallout of demonetisation had chipped his image. “This election is about Modi and not who will be the BJP’s CM. When Modi says we will waive farmers’ loans, people believe him because he never goes back on his word,” said Bahraich lawyer Srinath Shukla.

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