IF POLITICS IS the art of performance, Uttar Pradesh could well be the theatre of the absurd.
Vying for the 80 front row seats in this theatre are the BJP and a mahagathbandhan of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party with a bit role for the Rashtriya Lok Dal. The Congress, going by its president Rahul Gandhi’s statements, is offering cues to the alliance from the wings.
Amid this, in Gorakhpur, a seat won five times by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a garbled script is unfolding. In 2014, the BJP won the seat with a margin of 3.12 lakh votes. In 2017, the five assembly seats under it, too, voted in its favour. But in the 2018 bypoll following Yogi’s resignation, the SP candidate polled some 20,000 more votes than the BJP nominee. In Phulpur, which was the constituency of Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, the margin of loss was higher at 59,460. Kairana, which went to vote following its MP’s death, recorded a victory margin of 44,618 for the SP-supported RLD candidate. These losses carried weight as they were spread across the state—Gorakhpur in the east, Kairana in the west and Phulpur in between. The war paint on Yogi, who had led the campaign refusing help from the central leadership, began to peel off.
Surheeta Kareem, the Congress candidate in the Gorakhpur bypoll, tells THE WEEK that there is no longer the feeling that this is Yogi’s seat. “In 2017, there was a hangover of the 2014 polls. But Gorakhpur got nothing to show that it was the CM’s constituency despite his visits every three weeks,” she says.
Gorakhpur is said to be the “seat of the Gorakhnath Mandir”, of which Yogi is head seer. The only route to winning here is to have the temple’s blessings. Gorakhpur is also the birthplace of the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HVY), which labels itself as ‘a fierce cultural and social organisation dedicated to hindutva and nationalism’. After Yogi’s ascension and the subsequent spotlight on the group, it was pushed to the background. Its state president Sunil Singh was suspended and jailed under the National Security Act. He went on to form the Hindu Yuva Vahini (Bharat) and filed his nomination from Gorakhpur. Though his papers were rejected, he claims the 10,000 members of his outfit are committed to ending Yogi’s influence in eastern UP and the state. “It was our dedication to Hindu culture and our sacrifices for its protection that made Yogi who he is today,” says Singh. “Now the BJP has done black magic on him. He is behaving unlike himself. We will ensure his defeat.”
In it to win it: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav with father Mulayam and BSP supremo Mayawati at a rally in Mainpuri | Pawan Kumar
On Central schemes, the opinion largely is that while they are good, the benefits have not reached the deserving or have reached in half measure. Unemployment remains high, poor rainfall is compounding farmer distress, local businesses are suffering and the struggle to comprehend the intricacies of the Goods & Services Tax remains. But the strains of demonetisation are fainter, nationalistic fervour is high and there is a clear distinction between the perception of Narendra Modi’s personality and the inadequacies of his government. “Modi toh achcha hai. Phir aana chahiye (Modi is good. He should come again)” is a chant across the state. The far less repeated strain is that if development was the BJP’s poll plank, why must there be statements like Yogi’s “If they have Ali, we have Bajranj Bali”. Also, there is a worry that a fall in voting in urban constituencies like Ghaziabad means that the BJP voter is not stepping out. Many in Gorakhpur believe that Yogi has Modi’s backing only till the end of the polls, and a poor report card will ensure he is cut to size. And, that could see the return of the even more belligerent Yogi, now caged by the sobriety his office demands.
Meanwhile, the BSP-SP alliance is pinning its hopes on the combined strength of its numbers to strike a winning note. In 2014, the BJP polled 42.63 per cent of votes and won 71 seats in the state. The SP got 22.35 per cent of votes and five seats, and the BSP 19.77 per cent and no seats. The Congress’s vote share was 7.53 per cent and it won two seats. The combined vote share of the BSP and SP at 42.12 per cent was only slightly lower than the BJP’s share. But, in more than 45 seats, the BJP polled more votes than the BSP and SP put together. Therefore, vote share and its conversion to seats is never simple.
An SP leader from eastern Uttar Pradesh says that for the alliance to win, it needs four big castes to come together and 20 per cent vote from other castes, but it only has the dalits, Muslims and Yadavs. “Among the dalits, it is just the Chamars. Among the backward castes, it is only the Ahirs who will side with us,” he says.
The alliance has other hiccups. Yadavs and dalits are not natural allies. There is also the perception that the current crop of leadership is inaccessible and oblivious to ground realities. Many senior leaders in the SP are angered by the apparent ambition of Akhilesh Yadav and the gradual sidelining of Mulayam Singh Yadav. Mulayam’s brother Shivpal has floated the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party. There is also the misgiving that in seat division, the BSP landed the more winnable chunk.
Meanwhile, the BJP has allied with the Nishad Party, which was earlier dallying with the SP. Nishads, who have historically lived and worked along riverbanks, are said to be influential in eight districts, but the party’s calculations put it at more than thrice that number. “We are as strong as the Muslim vote in the state, and will have a decisive say in this election,” says Sanjay Nishad, party president. “It was only under this government that a separate department of fisheries was carved out under the ministry of agriculture.” The party hopes that it will be given the same prominence that Apna Dal got post the 2014 polls. For the two seats the party won, its president Anupriya Patel was made minister of state, health and family welfare. This time, there has been a split in the Apna Dal with Patel’s mother Krishna throwing in her lot with the Congress.
Then, there is the Muslim vote, which the BSP-SP alliance is banking on. There are over two dozen seats where Muslims are over 20 per cent of the population. Among these, in one they account for more than half the voters and in five for more than 40 per cent voters. The 2014 polls, however, proved that these numbers alone cannot get a Muslim candidate through. Echoes of the 2008 Batla House encounter are heard in Akhilesh’s constituency, Azamgarh, from where two young men killed in the encounter hailed. Shadab Ahmed, father of one of the men arrested after the encounter, says, “No party has done anything for the many Muslims who have been jailed on charges of terror. The best the SP did was offer lip sympathy. But is that enough for us to vote?”
In Mohanlalganj, a reserved seat adjoining Lucknow, MP Kaushal Kishore of the BJP says that development has been brought to the doorstep of people’s homes. But ask him about the status of toilets in his constituency, and he says, “With a time-bound programme like this, block level officials are in a rush to be in the good books of the higher-ups. Sometimes they make two families reach an understanding about using the same toilet. Then a fallout happens, and people continue to defecate in the open.”
Also, there is a feeling in the BJP that many who could have won the election on their own merit have been denied tickets, like Ramakant Yadav, who won Azamgarh for the BJP in 2009. Disgruntled leaders like him have now found refuge in the Congress and might upset the BJP in at least five seats.
The entry of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has infused energy in the Congress, not just in eastern Uttar Pradesh, of which she was made in-charge, but also in Kanpur, Fatehpur Sikri and Farrukhabad where she has intervened directly. “There is a huge undercurrent of support for Priyanka,” says Gajendra Singh Sisodia, one of Rahul Gandhi’s key election coordinators in Amethi. The promises of Nyuntam Aay Yojana and the BJP’s invectives against the Gandhi family could shift some of the undecided voters in its corner.
As the election enters its final act, its suspense is still some distance from a resolution.