BJP dims BSP’s chances among core voters
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), led by Mayawati, has been largely portrayed as a “poacher” and a “vote cutter” in the Assembly elections, dimming the party’s standing as an alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP)Congress combine.
Mayawati continues to inspire respect among sections of the Dalits and instils a degree of confidence among Muslims who believe she is a more effective challenger to the BJP. However, the BSP — the first party to get a majority on its own in 2007 after a long spell of messy coalitions — is unlikely to repeat that feat this time. The magic figure of 207 that Mayawati had attained then was catalysed by a rainbow social alliance that had space for almost every major social grouping.
This time, Mayawati might have forfeited the backward caste votes, especially those of the most backward castes, and the upper caste votes to the BJP. The BSP is not the first choice of most Muslims because they are suspicious that Mayawati can do business with the BJP to become the chief minister.
Tanveer Akhtar, a small farmer of Isauli in Sultanpur district, who supplements his earnings by driving a hired car, said, “Mayawati remains suspect for us although she recently clarified she would rather sit in the Opposition than go with the BJP. We can’t take her words on face value because she craves for power above everything else.”
Akhtar’s misgivings about Mayawati were not shared by other Muslims in his village. Mohammad Ismail Khan, who quit the SP recently and joined the BSP, said Muslim votes could augment a party’s vote share. “Our votes are like that extra two kg which when added to a weighing machine in equilibrium will make the difference between a win and a defeat.”
Khan’s colleague Zakir Hussain — who defected, too, to the BSP from the SP — opposed the suggestion that mathematical calculations alone influenced minority votes. “No, there are solid issues. The SP government did little to improve the state of the roads and schools. The unemployment dole that Akhilesh (Yadav) had promised before the last election never reached many genuine beneficiaries. On top of that, look at Akhilesh’s double standards. He campaigns for persons like Gayatri Prajapati and Arun Verma who are accused of rape and murder but throws out the so-called criminals Mukhtar Ansari and Atiq Ahmed. Is it because Ansari and Ahmed belong to a certain faith?” asked Hussain. Intra-faith differences also counted in seats such as Rudauli in the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency. Here, the Muslims spoke of their preference for the BSP’s Haji Feroz Khan “Gabbar” over the SP’s Rushdie Mian, because Khan is a Sunni and Rushdie Mian a Shia. Shias are in a tiny minority in UP, barring Lucknow. The Shia-Sunni contradictions have got the SP worried enough to get Mohammad Azam Khan to visit Rudauli and say “if you cut open the veins of Shias and Sunnis, the colour of the blood that flows is the same”.
The BJP, on its part, has sedulously worked on a strategy to wean away the BSP’s Dalit votes other than those of the Jatavs, the sub-caste to which Mayawati belongs. The party had already spirited away the SP’s core Yadav and the BSP’s Jatav votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP’s premise was that Dalit sub-castes like the Passis, Khatiks and Valmikis, who also count numerically like the Jatavs, were easy prey because they were purportedly upset with Mayawati’s “Jatav-centered” politics.
The BJP’s Faizabad MP, Lalu Singh, explained why the strategy could possibly work. “The Passis are a militant grouping and count substantially in practically every seat in central UP. If you recall, in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress picked up most of its 22 seats in this region because it had focused on the Passis. You will see the difference their support has made to us in this election,” Singh claimed.
His claim was belied by the ground realities that prevailed in several villages after demonetisation. Across sub-caste divisions, it was the Dalits, more than any other community, who complained that “note bandi” had hit them seriously. At Pahurawan village in the Raebareli Lok Sabha constituency, Dharam Raj, a Passi locomotive pilot in the railways, wondered if the Modi government would leave him with anything at all after taxing the bank withdrawals. “I earn well but the tax I pay on the withdrawals are shrinking my savings.” Like many other Passis in his village, he said he preferred the BSP over the other parties.
Caste equations apart, the other cachet Mayawati carries is her record as an administrator, particularly on the law and order front. With the BJP unleashing a high-decibel campaign on the alleged murders and rapes during the SP regime, interspersed with provocative slogans, few, if any, presently mentioned that Mayawati had cracked down on hard-core criminals in politics.