In the 2017 Assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP bet big on communities of non-Yadav OBCs, giving over 35% of the seats to such communities to shore up its support base.
In 2019, the importance of these communities in the caste chessboard of eastern Uttar Pradesh (almost 17 seats) is again enhanced, with even the Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress announcing tie-ups with community-specific parties and even handing out ticket to some of them.
In a polarised electoral scenario with party lines and their support bases clearly drawn, this floating vote of non-Yadav OBCs and most backward classes (MBCs), who form nearly 25% of the 40% OBC vote in the State, will decide who wins in this area.
In the run-up to the 2019 election therefore, the area saw the crossing over of Pravin Nishad (who won the Gorakhpur byelection last year on SP ticket) of the Nishad Party, to the BJP and is now the party’s candidate in Sant Kabir Nagar. Not to be outdone, the Congress has announced tie-ups with the Krishna Patel faction of the Apna Dal and the Babu Singh Kushwaha-led Jan Adhikar Party (JAP), the SP tying up with the Janwadi Socialist Party (JSP) of Sanjay Chauhan which claims to command the support of the Nonia Chauhans in the area.
In fact, Chandauli has emerged as the laboratory for testing where this intense wooing of non-Yadav communities will go, with the SP fielding Mr. Chauhan and the Congress fielding Sukanya Kushwaha, wife of Babu Singh Kushwaha to take on the BJP’s State unit chief Mahendranath Pandey.
In other seats too, strategic placements are being done making the contests a playbook of post-Mandal politics, where OBC groups are breaking away from a larger block to strike out on their own.
“Most of these castes are too small to matter in a macro situation, but are significant add-ons in individual seats,” a senior BJP office-bearer said.
On the ground
At Kotwa Farm in Azamgarh, where SP chief Akhilesh Yadav is contesting against Bhojpuri star and BJP candidate Dinesh Lal Yadav “Nirauwa”, there is a palpable angst against the Yogi Adityanath government among members of the Yadav community.
“What have we got under the Yogi government? The moment we mention we are Yadavs, our work is stalled. Baba jaatiwaad badhaatey hain aur kehtey hain ki Sapaa (SP) ek Jaati vishesh ki party hai (Yogi Adityanath is propagating casteism when he says the SP is a party of a particular caste only),” says Umesh Yadav. He, however, admits, that the BJP might wean away non-Yadav OBC votes, though “not in Azamgarh, here Akhilesh will win.”
Professor Satish Kumar Rai, who taught politics at Kashi Vidyapeeth and is a member of the Rajiv Gandhi Study Circle, says the phenomenon is reflective of the change in heartland politics after the great churn of Mandal Commission recommendations.
“Earlier, caste was based on a more socially enforced roti-beti kya vyavahaar (marriage and inter-dining prohibitions), but now it is a modern political system, deepening its scope,” he says.
“The mobilisation of intermediate castes that began with Charan Singh in 1967, and the empowerment of OBCs under Mandal politics of the 1990s has led to this further differentiation,” he adds.
Binding factor
In many seats across eastern Uttar Pradesh, this floating vote will be decisive, with parties such as the BJP hoping that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would emerge as a binding factor on questions of national security and social welfare programmes.
While the contest in Uttar Pradesh as a whole is being compared to classroom subjects such as arithmetic (the grand alliance) and chemistry (Prime Minister Modi’s charisma), in eastern Uttar Pradesh, physicist Isaac Newton makes an entry.
“Here, neither arithmetic nor chemistry will work, it will be physics, and momentum on the side of one party that will decide the contest,” says Niraj Chauhan, a shopkeeper in Mirzapur.
