This time in the political arena of Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party led by Akhilesh Yadav is competing with the strong BJP. The saffron party has not only changed the game in the state since 2013, but also left an indelible mark in the national politics.
With its restructuring strategy, the BJP has finally corrected its caste arithmetic during two decades of hard work. But has the BJP’s main rival in UP, the SP, changed its strategy for the 2022 assembly elections? There seems to be an additional Hindu factor in the party’s usual Yadav-Muslim formula.
The story of BJP’s defeat
After 2002, the BJP, which was the political force behind the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in Uttar Pradesh in the 1990s, saw its support base shrink significantly. In 1991, the party that got a clear majority under the leadership of Kalyan Singh, along with regional satraps, Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party of Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party, defeated election by election at the center level.
In 2007, in fact, the BSP got an absolute majority, Mayawati becoming the first chief minister in the state to complete a five-year term. In 2012, his government was replaced by the SP’s absolute majority mandate, with Akhilesh Yadav becoming the second CM to complete a five-year term.
The BJP came third in both the elections. Clearly, the saffron party could not maintain its support base among traditional voters, such as upper castes and Banias, and lost votes from other pro-communities as well.
The BJP seems to have surrendered to the caste arithmetic of the SP and BSP, which focused exclusively on the Muslim vote. The campaign strategy of both parties was to target caste and community-based votes: Yadav-Muslim alliance for SP and Jatav-Muslim alliance for BSP, Mayawati was from Jatav community.
Overall, Yadavs and Jatavs make up close to 10 to 11 percent of Uttar Pradesh’s total population, and combined with the 19 percent Muslim population could form a significant part of the winning combination. Both these parties needed additional votes from other caste groups, and Mayawati focused on Brahmins and other Dalits, while Mulayam and later Akhilesh went for other backward and some upper caste votes. But the goal was specifically to appeal to the Muslim vote bank as its numbers were enormous.
In the 2007 assembly elections, SP gave tickets to 58 Muslim candidates, while BSP gave tickets to 61 and Congress 49. BSP became the winner and formed the government. In the 2012 assembly elections, SP had given tickets to 78 Muslim candidates, 85 to BSP and 62 to Congress.
However, this time the SP formed the government with a huge majority. A total of 68 Muslim candidates won, setting a record with the community’s representation in the state assembly.
real politics
But in 2013 there were three developments that changed the face of politics not only in Uttar Pradesh but across India: the communal riots in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh.
More than 60 people were killed and more than 40,000 were displaced in the riots between Hindus and Muslims. Its impact was felt all over India.
Akhilesh-led SP was accused by opposition parties. But in 2013, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi also became the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, after which he decided to contest from Varanasi Lok Sabha seat.
Modi, if a Hindutva political leader, was also known for his pro-development governance and politics. He was seen as a good face to counter the UPA-led government, which by then had earned the “anti-people sign” of “nine years-nine scams”.
BJP was looking for caste equation in Uttar Pradesh. It wanted to bring all non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits under its wing to shape its political campaign for the rest of India. The party said that if you win Uttar Pradesh, it means you win India.
However, it was not just the 2013 riots that pushed Hindu votes towards the BJP. It was a combination of all three factors that pushed 70 per cent voters in UP to the BJP.
The party was successful in its attempt to reconsolidate Hindu votes by blaming the SP and BSP for following “minority appeasement politics” – a real politics that the SP, BSP or other political parties could not read in the state. , which is reflected in their election management. upcoming election.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the SP fielded 13 Muslims, the BSP 19 and the Congress nine. No one could win. The BJP, along with its allies, won 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP, winning all 21 seats where Muslims accounted for more than 10 per cent of the population.
On the basis of Hindu vote mobilization, the BJP became the first government after 1984 to get an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha elections. In the 2017 assembly elections, the SP-Congress alliance had given tickets to 87 Muslim candidates while the BSP had given tickets to 99.
The BJP still got an absolute majority and formed the government. In 140 assembly constituencies, each with more than 20 percent Muslims, the BJP and its ally Apna Dal won 111 seats.
Two big losses in the last elections prompted some reform in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, it seems but nothing significant happened on the ground. SP and BSP contested that election in alliance and this time fielded only 10 Muslim candidates. Six won, three from each party. The Congress fielded eight Muslim candidates, but none could win. Overall, the BJP alliance won 64 seats with an increase in vote share touching the 50 per cent mark, while the SP-BSP alliance won 15 seats. The Congress could win just one seat, losing the family bastion of Amethi.
What’s in store for 2022?
Now it comes to the 2022 assembly elections- when this time BSP is not being seen as a major political player and BJP and SP are being considered as main rivals. Looking at its past experience, this time SP is focusing more on wooing Hindu voters. The party is trying to add more Hindu votes to the Yadav-Muslim alliance.
In the first two phases of the elections, 23 Muslim candidates will be in the fray for 113 seats. Its official list of 257 constituencies so far has only 45 Muslims. More importantly, the party is also not fielding Muslim candidates from districts like Muzaffarnagar and Amroha, as it did earlier.
Akhilesh is also engaged in creating an image of Hindus by calling himself Ram and Krishna devotees and is talking about the establishment of “Ram Rajya”. He claims that the Kashi Vishwanath corridor was approved by his party and if voted to power, he will complete the Ram temple project in Ayodhya long before the BJP.
The Samajwadi Party, however, is unusually silent on its Muslim candidates. Akhilesh is clearly trying to create a new identity for his party.
But can it do any good to the party on the ground? Only an election result can tell, but Akhilesh’s insistence on calling Muhammad Ali Jinnah India’s freedom fighter and placing him in the league of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbai Patel portrayed him and his party as “adversaries”. To intensify the campaign of their rivals. -Hindu” and “anti-India”. When he says that Pakistan is not the real enemy, he gives BJP more fodder to call him and his party “pro-Pakistan”.
And the “anti-Hindu” remarks of SP’s Muslim candidates will only add to the narrative – the party’s candidate from Meerut, Rafique Ansari, has said that the BJP-led government has “tortured and oppressed” Muslims in the last five years and started It has happened in spreading “Hindu Guardi”. Combine this with the likes of SP candidates in Azam Khan and Nahid Hasan, who have allegedly made communal remarks in the past.
This is clearly another shot in the arm for the BJP’s campaign, which has several development projects for the state. This comes with the possibility of garnering Hindu votes on its caste reorganization basis with the start of Ram temple construction in Ayodhya and the grand opening of the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor in Varanasi.
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