BJP’S Dalit trouble in UP: There is more to the issue than meets the eye
under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, a law meant to protect the marginalised communities, smacked of a conspiracy to scrap reservation for Dalits.
The 37-year-old lawmaker from Bahraich then went on to organise a mass rally in Lucknow on April 2, coinciding with the Bharat Bandh that saw Dalit anger spill onto streets across the country. A day after Bharat Bandh, Kharwar made headlines with a letter to the PM, accusing Adityanath and other Uttar Pradesh BJP leaders of not acting against party officials in his area who were conspiring against him. The MP from Robertsganj said he was scolded and thrown out of the office of the UP CM, when he had gone there for help.
Hours afterwards, his counterpart from Etawah, Ashok Doharey, also shot off a letter to the PM, saying Dalits, particularly in UP, were being unfairly targeted by the police in the aftermath of Bharat Bandh. They were being pulled out of their homes and beaten.
Notwithstanding their common cause and shared grievances against Yogi, there is something else that cuts across these four Dalit MPS.
All of them are lateral entrants into the BJP. Neither did they grow up with any social ties to the BJP nor were they groomed in the Rashtriya Swayamsevaksangh, the ideological fount of the ruling party.
Phule joined politics at a very young age, inspired by Kanshi Ram, the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
She switched to the BJP in 2002 after BSP chief Mayawati suspended her over a local controversy.
Both Yashwant Singh and Doharey were ministers when Mayawati was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh between 2007 and 2012.
Prior to joining the BSP, Singh had been with the Rashtriya Lok Dal. None of them have the kind of ideological moorings that could tie them to the BJP forever.
All of them may switch sides, and there is a good reason for that. In three of the four constituencies they represent, Dalits and Muslims together account for more than 50% of votes. In the fourth, Etawah, it’s 40%.
The chances of their re-election in 2019 on a BJP slate have diminished with the new-found political chemistry between the Samajwadi Party and the BSP and the prospects of an anti-bjp alliance that will likely include the Congress party.
In all these constituencies, the combined votes of the SP, BSP and Congress were significantly higher than the votes polled by the BJP during the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 as well as the assembly elections of 2019.
An analysis by this author, based on constituency-wise voting in 2014 and 2017 and caste data provided by two political parties, shows that Dalits, Muslims and Yadavs have a share of more than 40% of the votes in as many as 44 of the record 73 seats that the BJP and its ally Apna Dal won in 2014.
With no wave in 2019, the outcome of the next Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh will largely depend on caste arithmetic.
In Phulpur and Gorakhpur, the BSP demonstrated it can successfully transfer its votes in favour of the SP.
It remains to be seen if SP can reciprocate. That will be tested when bypolls are held in Kairana, another Bjp-held Lok Sabha seat that fell vacant after the death of its MP.
If Kairana swings away from BJP, expect another round of implosion.
Clearly, BJP’S Dalit trouble in the heartland of Indian politics is far from over.
WITH NO WAVE IN 2019, THE OUTCOME OF THE NEXT LOK SABHA ELECTIONS IN UTTAR PRADESH WILL LARGELY DEPEND ON CASTE ARITHMETIC