Uttar Pradesh - Not A Walk Over For The BJP

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is claiming that it is invincible in Uttar Pradesh, saying it would sweep the 80 Lok Sabha seats this time, is actually facing a tough contest. This is mainly because of simmering discontent amongst its own cadre and also because there is no single issue dominating the political discourse.

The contest in Uttar Pradesh has been reduced to a seat by seat battle, where each candidate, the caste equations, and local issues would dominate the poll outcome. Definitely not a happy scenario for the ruling BJP which is on a 400+ mission, hoping the Modi ‘karishma’ would override everything else.

“What Modi karishma? Even the BJP workers are finding it difficult to go amongst voters and justify his bunch of lies. So they are indifferent. Denial of tickets to stalwarts has also angered the core BJP supporter,” Tejinder Singh Virk, Samajwadi Party leader from western UP said.

According to him, Pilibhit, Rampur and Moradabad are seats where the I.N.D.I.A. bloc is slated to register a comfortable victory. Kairana too is a seat, he says, where the alliance should sail through, if no mischief is done by BJP. Bijnor and Nagina, he said, are seats where the alliance is likely to lose. Independent observers tend to agree with this assessment, provided elections are held in a free and fair manner and no manipulation with EVMs is done.

If the above analysis is indeed correct, then the first phase, which is going to be a window to the things to come, does pose a serious challenge for the BJP in UP, making one wonder where its claim of winning 400 seats comes from.

Western Uttar Pradesh, which is a Jat, Muslim and Dalit dominated area, actually is a window to the state at large because it defines which way the wind is blowing for each party. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, when the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) were in alliance, along with Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), the BJP had won three out of eight seats which are going to polls tomorrow. These were Pilibhit, Kairana and Muzaffarnagar.

The scenario has changed this time, with RLD shifting to the BJP camp, the SP and Congress contesting in alliance, and BSP on its own. Ground realities have completely changed this time. Pilibhit, which was considered the bastion of “the other Gandhis” (Maneka Gandhi and Varun Gandhi) seems a tough contest because the BJP has denied a ticket to Varun.

He had won last time with a record seven lakh votes, with 59.4 percent vote share. The BJP has fielded Jitin Prasada from Pilibhit, he is the son of late Congress leader Jitendra Prasad.

He had shifted to the BJP before the Assembly elections and is presently a minister in the Adityanath government. He is facing SP’s Bhagwat Saran Gangwar and BSP’s Anis Ahmad. He is facing a tough contest because the Gangwars, who have traditionally been BJP supporters, are upset with the BJP this time because Santosh Gangwar, a stalwart from the community has been left out in the cold. Their sympathies are expected to be with the SP’s Gangwar candidate.

Muzaffarnagar, which the BJP’s Sanjiv Balyan had won with 5.73 lakh votes and 49.5 percent vote share, defeating late Ajit Singh of RLD, who had narrowly lost by 0.5 per cent votes share, getting 5.67 lakh votes, is believed to be a tough contest for BJP this time because Balayan, who is contesting again, has ruffled many feathers.

The local BJP leader Sangeet Som, who has been denied a berth by the BJP this time, is reported to be working against him, along with at least four sitting BJP MLAs. Local Thakur supporters of the BJP are also said to be angry because of denial of tickets to their community.

In fact, Thakurs from 24 village panchayats in western UP recently held a Mahapanchayat to openly declare their opposition to Balayan, vowing publicly to defeat him. Though the party has been bending over backwards to control damage, no one knows which way this vote will go this time. Political observers say even a 2-3 percent swing would see the BJP candidate lose.

Another seat which BJP won last time, Kairana, is slated to go the alliance way this time because of changing equations. Kairana, it may be recalled, had been in news since 2014 because of alleged migration of Hindus from the area, a canard started by BJP leader late Hukum Singh, who had won the election in 2014.

The seat, however, was wrested by RLD’s Tabassum Hassan, in 2018 in a byelection necessitated by Hukum Singh’s death. Tabassum Hassan was supported by the SP then. In 2019, the seat was won back by the BJP’s Pradeep Kumar who won with 50 percent votes.

This time, however, he is facing a tough contest because Iqra Hassan, the SP candidate is in the fray. This 27-year-old woman from the Hassan family, has succeeded in making a good rapport with the local masses.

A law graduate from London, Iqra is being assisted by her MLA brother and is riding high on the family prestige in this area. If all goes well for her, she might emerge the winner. The BJP’s pitch has not been so strong this time because migration as an issue has failed and the BSP, encashing on the Thakurs’ resentment against BJP, has fielded a Thakur candidate.

Another seat which is in the news is, Saharanpur, because here the alliance candidate is Congress’s Imran Masood who has a knack of being in the headlines for his sometimes not so discreet comments. Masood, who is hoping to win on the basis of substantial Muslim voters in the area, is trying hard to woo Hindu voters as well as he is seen reciting Ramayan katha at meetings, visiting temples etc.

He is pitched against BJP’s Raghav Lakhnapal, who had won the seat in 2014 but lost in 2019. In 2019, the seat was won by BSP in alliance with SP then.

The polls will reveal if the presence of BSP in the fray on its own would only dent the I.N.D.I.A. alliance or would cut both ways, and whether the 400 + slogan is only a bluster, or there is actually some substance to it.

Going by various opinion polls and surveys and the high pitched propaganda by the godi media, the outcome has been already pre decided. But the voices from the ground are giving a completely different message.