Kalyan, a classical marginal player

VITAL FACTOR-I

His party contested 385 seats in the 2002 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh. It won four.

So when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) appear to be falling over themselves to woo Kalyan Singh and his Rashtriya Kranti Party (RKP), you could be forgiven for asking yourself what the fuss is all about. Singh's performance in a poll he's supposed to have been master of, is uninspiring.

At first glance the man looks like being a loser. Having steered the BJP to victory with 226, 175 and 176 seats successively in three Assembly polls between 1991 and 1999, he picked a fight with the top leadership and quit the BJP to launch a new party in 1999.

The RKP will make its Lok Sabha debut this time, and results in a general election will determine how much of a player Singh will be in national politics.

The 2002 Assembly polls prove three conclusions: one, that while the RKP on its own doesn't count for much and is a classical marginal player, in combination with the two Big Ones in UP, the SP and the BJP, it can be a formidable electoral force. (The Bahujan Samaj Party and the RKP cannot come together because of a history of political bitterness. Thus, for the purposes of enquiry, that combination is a political impossibility).

Two, that the RKP's performance in reserved constituencies proves that it can become the pole around which all anti-BSP forces can gather.

Three, that the RKP's caste appeal overrides regional factors. It has a following that cuts across zones and regions and is not limited by Singh's area of influence - Atrauli-Aligarh.

Consider the RKP's performance in just three Assembly constituencies, picked randomly, in the 2002 polls.

In Auraiya, the BSP polled 28.89 per cent of the vote, the SP 28.13 per cent, the BJP 24.11 per cent and the RKP, which nominated a Muslim candidate, got 11.77 per cent.

The story is the same in Aliganj --the SP 30.48 per cent, the BSP 25.68 per cent, the BJP 19.97 per cent and the RKP 21.47 per cent, and Anupshahr, the BJP 23.64 per cent, the BSP 22.79 per cent and the RKP 18.03 per cent.

In other words, if the RKP can come to an electoral understanding to transfer all its votes to either the SP or the BJP, it can represent the edge between victory or defeat for either.

The RKP's performance in SC constituencies is equally interesting. In a state where the SCs vote virtually en bloc for the BSP, the tendency is for other castes to band together so that their vote outnumbers the committed SC vote.

For instance, an SP candidate, with 24.06 per cent of the vote, was returned from the Babina (SC) constituency, with the BSP coming a close second with 23.21 per cent.

But if the BJP (19.37 per cent) and the RKP (16.31 per cent) had come together, the story might have been different. The Babina constituency is Ahir dominated but the RKP fielded a non-Ahir.

Singh belongs to the OBC, a Lodh like Uma Bharti. This could be a key to his appeal in SC as well as non-SC constituencies cutting across regions.

But the question is whether his appeal will work as well in a Lok Sabha election as it appears to have done in an Assembly poll. And who his allies will be.

(This was the first of a five-part series on political parties that are marginal players in national politics but could affect the outcome of the general elections in unpredictable and significant ways)