A WALK THROUGH the bylanes of the densely-populated Burari area in Delhi unveils a microcosm of migrant life in the national capital. It is marked by the struggle of eking out a living and the difficulties of an existence in the congested unauthorised colonies. The constituency on the outskirts of Delhi also brings to the fore the electoral importance of the migrant population, predominantly made up of people from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, better known as Purvanchalis.
About half of the 3.6 lakh voters in the Burari assembly constituency are Purvanchalis. Not surprisingly, it is their issues that dominate the electoral discourse, with talks of promoting Bhojpuri and Maithili and building ghats for Chhath puja thrown in for good measure. Even the candidature in the constituency has a strong Purvanchali flavour. The sitting MLA, Sanjeev Jha of the Aam Aadmi Party, is a first-generation migrant from Madhubani, Bihar. His main opponents are candidates fielded by the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, which are predominantly Bihari parties but have for the first time entered the electoral fray in Delhi in alliance with the BJP and the Congress, respectively.
“The most important issue for us is improving the living conditions in our colonies, be it electricity, water or roads. Also, there is filth everywhere. There is no sanitation and no sewer connection,” said Pushpalata Kumari, 45, an anganwadi worker who migrated to Delhi from eastern Uttar Pradesh 20 years ago.
Jha claims that in the past five years the unauthorised colonies of Burari have got access to amenities they never had before. “Piped water has been provided. Roads have been laid everywhere. Work has commenced on laying a sewer line,” he said. A majority of the beneficiaries of the AAP government’s schemes are migrants in the low and middle income groups, he said.
Shailendra Kumar, the JD(U) candidate, is also a first-generation migrant from Bihar, and he seeks to play up politics of association by referring to the leadership of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. “The Purvanchalis consider Nitish Kumar an ideal leader. He has done the society a lot of good by banning liquor in Bihar. I cannot ban liquor here, but I have promised to close down illegal liquor shops in the area,” he said.
RJD’s Pramod Tyagi, unlike Jha and Kumar, is a son of the soil. He said the alliance with the Congress emphasised the political importance of the Purvanchalis. “It is not just about the national parties realising the importance of Purvanchalis in Delhi politics. The alliance is also meant to convey a message to the people of Bihar,” said Tyagi.
An estimated 33.5 per cent of the 1.46 crore voters in Delhi are from eastern UP and Bihar. And they will play a crucial role in 30 constituencies. The BJP-JD(U)-LJP alliance has fielded 10 Purvanchali candidates and the Congress-RJD tie-up has eight. The AAP has 13 candidates from the region.
The AAP is credited with acknowledging the political heft of the community by fielding 11 Purvanchali candidates in the 2015 elections. All of them won. The election saw a marked shift in Delhi politics—which was earlier dominated by the Punjabi-Baniya lobby—to the city’s huge migrant population. The election also witnessed the transfer of the Purvanchali vote bank from the Congress to the AAP.
It was in recognition of the emergence of the Purvanchalis as a deciding factor in the elections that the BJP appointed Bhojpuri actor Manoj Tiwari as its state president. “I took over Delhi BJP when no one else wanted to do the job and the huge challenge of Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections lay ahead. We won the MCD polls, and we also won the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. Of course, the responsibility that I was entrusted with gave rise to a huge enthusiasm among the people of Purvanchal,” said Tiwari.
Tiwari has used the Purvanchali card to the hilt to attack the AAP. He said Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his party had insulted the people of Purvanchal by mocking his songs, and he keeps reminding people about Kejriwal’s reported comments on the people from the region who come to Delhi for medical treatment.
The AAP’s charge in Delhi is led by a number of Purvanchali leaders, like Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh, who is in charge of the assembly polls, the party’s Delhi convener Gopal Rai and its founding member Dilip Pandey. The Congress has Kirti Azad, who is the state unit’s campaign committee head, as its foremost representative from the region.
Rai said that his party had genuinely recognised the needs of the migrant population and worked for its welfare. “The BJP is now talking about giving ownership rights to the residents of unauthorised colonies. The Congress fooled the people for so long by handing out provisional certificates before election and forgetting about it afterwards. But we have actually improved the living conditions in these colonies and brought about a tangible change,” he said. The AAP claims that the government spent Rs8,000 crore in development works in unauthorised colonies in the past five years. The Kejriwal regime has declared Chhath, the biggest festival of the Purvanchalis, a public holiday and made Maithili an optional subject in Delhi government schools.
Rai said that the aggressive campaign of the BJP on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act might backfire because the migrant population was concerned about the National Register of Citizens. In fact, the BJP has deployed leaders and workers from the region in a bid to assuage the concerns of the Purvanchalis. It seems no one wants to displease the Purvanchalis in an election season.