Pratinav Mishra
Uttar Pradesh is always considered as a gateway or corridor to Delhi and whoever wins uttar pradesh sits in Delhi. Let’s examine few factors in brief about why BJP losses uttar pradesh
plot despite several supporting factors.
The Dalit vote was going to be critical, and it was correctly observed that the BJP’s aligning of non-Jatavs against the BSP’s Jatav base – one of the key tactical drivers of its sweep in the state in the last general as well as two assembly elections – had come undone over the Congress’s charge that a “400 paar” mandate would lead to a change in the Constitution. But nobody anticipated that Jatavs, whose 13% vote share dominates the Dalit base, would also vote tactically to defeat the BJP. For that to happen, the Jatavs had not only to jettison the BSP but also get over their antipathy towards the Yadav-dominated SP. Uttar Pradesh’s Dalits have long regarded the Yadavs as their worst oppressors; memories are still fresh of the law and order mayhem under the SP regime before Yogi Adityanath. Dalits, especially Jatavs, have not forgotten the Lucknow “Guest House” incident of 1995, when aggressive SP legislators and supporters came close to physically molesting Mayawati. Mulayam Singh Yadav carried that cross as long as he was alive. The SP-BSP alliance in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll did little to heal the emotional scar, even if it fetched 16 seats. But it was still wholly unexpected that ‘Behenji’s’ Jatav vote would abandon her in such totality when it became evident that her ticket selection for the BSP was clearly aimed at improving the BJP’s performance.
Akhilesh’s Deft Social Engineering:-
Observers also noted that this time, Akhilesh Yadav’s ticket distribution indicated much smarter social engineering as it marked a departure from the party’s almost total reliance on its Muslim-Yadav (MY) base. Tickets were given to only nine MY candidates: five Yadavs, all relatives of Akhilesh, and four Muslims. The rest of its 48 candidates were drawn mainly from the myriad other OBCs, denting another pillar of Amit Shah’s social engineering in Uttar Pradesh, where he had won over the non-Yadavs by pitting them against the Yadavs. There were a couple of other counter-intuitive choices too by Akhilesh: a ticket to a feisty Jatav woman in Meerut (a general seat), and another to a Brahmin in Ballia, where Rajputs have long reigned and where the BJP candidate was the son of arguably one of the tallest Rajput leader, ex-Prime Minister and veteran Congressman, Chandra Shekhar.
The Waning Of The ‘Magic’
Prashant Kishor, one of the more astute observers of Indian politics, explained in his TV interviews why he thought the BJP would end up near its 2019 tally of 303 seats. Modi’s popularity, he said, is the leitmotif of the party’s dominance. This popularity rests on four pillars: Hindutva, alignment of nationalism with Hindutva, the improvement in the material life of the labharthis through what has been termed “new welfarism”, and the BJP’s stupendous organisational strength and resource superiority. The debate will continue in the coming days over which of these four pillars caved in and by how much. But one fact has been cemented yet again: there is a ‘sell-by’ date for every product.
