Will Modi’s gambit work in UP?
The prospects of a hung assembly in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh is not being ruled out, particularly after the fifth phase of polling held barely 48 hours back on Monday. The poll percentage has been the lowest at 57.3 per cent so far. With 51 seats up for grabs, the SP won the lion's share of 37, the Congress and BJP five each, BSP three and others two in the last assembly polls in 2012.
Even as the SP-Congress alliance appears to have an edge at this juncture, the Lotus party is trying hard to break the SP’s stranglehold in Eastern UP. As their main campaigner, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is making a determined bid to secure the advantage by projecting the saffron brigade as a non-Yadav OBC party by wooing the most backward classes. Whether this gambit will click for the BJP will be known when the counting of votes takes place on March 11.
However, voting in the penultimate sixth and the concluding seventh phase will be held on March fourth and eighth respectively. The population of Muslims in the last three phases is about 23 per cent and they have decided to vote with the onepoint agenda of keeping the BJP at bay. This does not mean that they are voting for SP. The mood seems to be tilting towards the BSP.
For Modi winning UP is a do-or-die battle after a gap of 14 years. Having lost the assembly elections in Bihar in 2015, a setback in UP has the portends of upsetting the Prime Minister's applecart in the run up to the 2019 general elections. Indeed what cannot be lost sight of is that the ruling party at the Centre, which has a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha for the first time, has not fielded a single Muslim candidate in the country's most populous state.
In the prevailing circumstances, the strategic voting by the Muslims is not the least surprising. For one, they are worried about being targeted in the prevailing atmosphere of intolerance. They need security which they believe can be provided by the SP-Congress combine and BSP supremo Mayawati, a four-time chief minister of UP. And third, they need to ensure that an atmosphere of peace and calm prevails rather than being caught in the throes of communal disturbances.
If the non-BJP leadership and parties heed their genuine demands, 'vikas' or development will follow. The upper castes appear to be throwing their weight behind the saffron party which the SP-Congress combine is trying to blunt by fielding more candidates from this community.
Claiming to have surged ahead in the first phase of polling in Western UP, the BJP is seeking to retain it till the end. However, their body language about the calculations in the last two phases does not invoke confidence. That might be the reason why Modi has doubled the number of rallies he will be addressing in the last two phases.
BJP president Amit Shah has shed the role of being a backroom strategist and is increasingly visible next only to Modi. The question on everyone's lips is whether Modi will be able to replicate the BJP's stupendous performance in UP during the 2014 general elections. The party had won a staggering 71 out of 80 seats to the Lok Sabha from UP.
In the last three years, the popularity of Modi and that of the BJP has dipped. It has not met with much success in polarising the voters. The barbs and attacks against political rivals, particularly the Prime Minister and Amit Shah on the one side and Akhilesh Yadav and Congress scion Rahul Gandhi on the other, have not only been bitter but at times amounted to hitting below the belt.
Modi claims he is the adopted son of UP because of being in the Lok Sabha from Varanasi. This has led Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to comment that UP has enough young men of merit and talent to take their home state on the path of development.
Mayawati's electoral rhetoric has once again touched upon creating four states if she comes to power in UP. This has been dismissed as an election gimmick. Yet it is argued by certain sections that UP desperately needs to be split so that it can be managed and administered well, focussing on direly required infrastructure facilities along with improving the lot of the poor.
The hill state of Uttarakhand has already been carved out of UP. That smaller states are being governed well is a myth as it has failed on all the parameters of human development indices.
Mayawati retrieved her plan unveiled for the first time in 2011, observing that her cabinet had approved a resolution for the creation of Purvanchal, Bundelkhand, Awadh Pradesh and Paschim Pradesh, which remained a non-starter.
However, on November 9, 2000, Uttarakahand became a new state of the Union. It was created by the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre headed by BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Two other states were also born on the same day – Chattisgarh and Jharkhand – carved out from Madhya Pradesh and Bihar respectively.