The significance of the Kurmi vote in the BJP’s scheme of things in Uttar Pradesh can be gauged by the fact that the party, which spoke of going it alone in the State in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, handed out two seats — Mirzapur and Pratapgarh — to Anupriya Patel’s party.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s opponents were more direct in claiming that the tie-up was affected to merely cement his position in Varanasi, which abuts Mirzapur, Ms. Patel’s constituency.
With the 2017 elections approaching, Ms. Patel’s elevation as a Minister at the Centre seems perfectly timed from the BJP’s perspective. Apart from her OBC background, the convent-educated and suave 35-year-old leader brings in a ‘progressive young face’ to the BJP’s repertoire. Her short career is however fraught with stories of political family feud.
Born to prominent Kurmi leader and a key founding member of the BSP, Sone Lal Patel, Ms. Anupriya Patel was educated at the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College for Women in Delhi and holds Masters Degrees in Psychology as well as in Business Administration. After the death of her father in a road accident in 2009, she assumed the role of the Apna Dal general secretary under the leadership of her mother Krishna Patel.
In 2012, she won the MLA seat from Rohaniya in Varanasi. Then in 2014, amid speculations that the young leader wished to contest from Varanasi, she became part of the NDA alliance and was allotted two Lok Sabha seats even though her party had just one legislator to boast, Ms. Patel herself. She won convincingly from Mirzapur, securing over 43 per cent votes.
However, soon after, she got involved in a factional feud with her mother over the control of the party. What started out as her disagreement with her mother over the appointment of her sister Pallavi as the party’s national vice-president, came to a breaking point in May 2015 when Ms. Krishna Patel expelled daughter Anupriya from the party for “anti-party activities.” The two have since then fought over the legacy of Sone Lal through separate factions of the Apna Dal.
Amid speculations that Ms. Patel might merge her faction of the AD with the BJP, observers believe her elevation as a Central Minister would not only help her claim legacy to her father but also provide fillip to her potential to be the next big Kurmi leader in the State.
A traditionally agrarian community, the Kurmis are key to the BJP’s outreach among non-Yadav OBCs. Considered as “floating vote,” their support is not loyal to any particular party. The BJP has been aggressively wooing them. If in 2014, Mr. Modi tried to connect to the Kurmi sentiment through the Sardar Patel statue, in his rallies in U.P., his lieutenant Amit Shah has been evoking Sone Lal Patel as a messiah of Dalits and backwards.
Last week, Mr. Shah addressed a rally in Varanasi to mark the 67th birth anniversary of Sone Lal Patel. His pitch for the consolidation of the Kurmi vote was emphasised when he, in the presence of Ms. Patel, cautioned voters against the overtures of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in Purvanchal, dismissing him as a “votekatua” (vote splitter). In what was billed to be a show of strength by Ms. Patel, Mr. Shah also pitched the idea that the BJP-Apna Dal alliance would trounce its opponents in 2017.
Mr. Kumar is himself a Kurmi, and hours after Ms. Patel’s entry into Mr. Modi’s Cabinet, the JD (U) announced that it would hold its party workers sammelan in Allahabad’s Phulpur region, a Kurmi belt, on July 17. Mr. Kumar’s increased activity in east U.P. also provoked Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh to bring back his old friend and Kurmi veteran Beni Prasad Verma to the party recently.
As an MP, Ms. Patel has served on the Committee on Empowerment of Women and Committee on Welfare of Other Backward Classes.
