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STATES: UTTAR PRADESH
Heady Start
The SP steals a march over a dithering BJP in the race
to win the next assembly polls
There was special
implication for the Samajwadi Party (SP) in the results of the recent
Shahjahanpur Lok Sabha by-election. Not only did it win the seat held
for long by the Congress' Jitendra Prasada, whose death necessitated the
by-election, it also pushed its main rival, the BJP, to fourth place.
The SP obviously believes the voting pattern will hold true when assembly
elections are held in Uttar Pradesh next year. Aspirants have already
started thronging the party headquarters in Lucknow to collect application
forms that cost Rs 5,000 each.
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UNCROWNED KING: Mulayam's supporters
already see him as the chief minister
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Battle plans are being readied. "We expect
assembly elections to be held some time in early winter," says Ashok
Bajpai, a senior party leader. It is the SP that stands to gain the most
from the disenchantment prevailing among the backward classes and a section
of upper-caste voters in the state. "In the previous elections, we
used upper-caste leaders and candidates for figurative value only,"
confides a senior party functionary. "But this time representation
will be given to the upper castes and non-Yadav backwards."
It does not require any political insight to
explain the SP's new strategy. Uttar Pradesh is a state where class and
caste are almost inflexible electoral factors. The Dalits vote en bloc
for the Bahujan Samaj Party while most Muslims and OBCs favour Mulayam
Singh Yadav. The disaffection among the upper castes due to the manner
in which Brahmin officials and party leaders have been ill-treated by
successive BJP governments has left this vote bank open to wooing by the
SP. With the chasm between the two main supporters of the BJP-Thakurs
and Brahmins-widening, the party's upper-caste card will no longer ensure
ballots.
Restlessness among the OBCS has been growing
because of the general perception that former BJP chief minister Kalyan
Singh was sacrificed to please a faction of upper-caste leaders working
against him. "I spent 40 years of my life in extending the BJP base
to the villages," says Kalyan, "but I wasn't given a hearing
even once by the high command before being hanged." Kalyan is certain
to wean OBCs away from the BJP. The formation of Uttaranchal, from where
the BJP got an assured 15 seats, has also gone against the saffron party.
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Rajnath
knows that a weakened BJP will need poll alliances to counter the
rise of the SP.
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The SP sits contended. The BJP has won only two
of the six by-elections held in Uttar Pradesh in the past six months.
Intra-party squabbling in the BJP contributed to the loss of at least
26 seats in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. Today, the situation is even
worse. If there were two camps those days-pro- and anti-Kalyan Singh-then
there are three today. The power dynamics revolving around Chief Minister
Rajnath Singh (Thakur), state party chief Kalraj Mishra (Brahmin) and
Om Prakash Singh (OBC) have weakened the popular appeal of the BJP in
Uttar Pradesh.
The SP, however, has a ponderous problem on
its hand. With more enemies than friends in other parties-Mulayam hates
the Congress as much as he dislikes the BJP-SP's headache lies in finding
the right electoral partners. Currently, Mulayam, as one of the moving
forces behind the ever-changing Third Front, is inclined to contest the
elections as a constituent of the recently formed People's Front, which
in Uttar Pradesh includes the Janata Dal (Secular) and the communists.
Luckily for the SP, the coming together of other parties-the BJP, the
BSP and, to an extent, Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD)-is only a
distant possibility due to the bitter relations among their leaders. But
they could join hands after the elections, if only to snub their common
enemy Mulayam whose primacy in politically the biggest state would be
a constant threat to the BJP-led coalition Government at the Centre.
Despite the heavy odds, Rajnath Singh is confident
of forming a BJP government again next year. He says that the performance
of his Government and a possible tie-up with the RLD should see him past
the post. Mulayam will be wary about such alliances, but he is unlikely
to be distracted by the chief minister's claims. For one, the massive
power crisis in the state, to which even Rajnath admits, has upset a lot
of people, especially the farmers. And Mulayam knows winners ride to victory
on such crises.
--Subhash Mishra
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