With new math, BJP plans long-term

In U.P., the party wants its formula of ‘OBC minus Yadav plus traditional upper castes’ to run till 2019

March 07, 2017 12:34 am | Updated 02:34 am IST - NEW DELHI

Strategists at work:  BJP chief Amit Shah, party leader Keshav Prasad Maurya and BJP national general secretary Anil Jain during a road show in Allahabad.

Strategists at work: BJP chief Amit Shah, party leader Keshav Prasad Maurya and BJP national general secretary Anil Jain during a road show in Allahabad.

As the end of the long, multi-phase Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh is now in sight, the BJP awaits not just the outcome of the polls but also the results of its social engineering strategy. Much rides on the strategy, which, if successful, could be a model for the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

The strategy can be summed up from the images in the party’s posters across the State — Prime Minister Narendra Modi with party president Amit Shah, State unit president Keshav Prasad Maurya and Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Uma Bharti and Kalraj Mishra.

While Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah effectively run party affairs, it is the projection of the others that is revealing. Mr. Maurya and Ms. Bharti are from the Other Backward Classes, though not the Yadav community, which is often seen as cornering much of the entitlements that accrue to the section.

“The BJP has given over 150 seats to non-Yadav OBCs out of the 383 seats it is fighting. Its ally Apna Dal too represents the non-Yadav OBC community of Kurmis and has been given 11 seats. Another ally, the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, is contesting nine seats. The party claims to command the support of the Rajbhar community, an OBC group that has been demanding inclusion in the Scheduled Caste category. They make up nearly 18% of the population in eastern Uttar Pradesh,” a senior leader said.

Weaning away

A large part of the BJP’s strategy, therefore, appears to be to wean away the non-Yadav OBC groups from parties such as the Samajwadi Party (SP) that claim to represent them.

“The appointment of Mr. Maurya as State unit chief is a clear signal that it is the BJP that is ready to truly empower these communities rather than the SP that only allows them to trail in the wake of a dominant Yadav group,” the leader said. This group has a presence of nearly 13-14% floating vote across the State. “Without them, the SP will only have the Yadav vote bank, with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) too poaching the Muslim vote,” he said.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Small and Medium Enterprises Minister Kalraj Mishra represent the traditional upper caste vote bank of the BJP, namely, the Thakurs and Brahmins. The party has given 65 seats to Thakurs and 64 to Brahmins. “We are, of course, depending a lot on the personal charisma of Prime Minister Modi, but this is the nuts and bolts of our social architecture. If we win on March 11, it will be a historic transformation of the BJP from being a Bania-Brahmin party to one that will have made a significant dent into the ‘givens’ of Lohiaite politics espoused by the socialists in the one State that hugely matters,” he said. For 2019 too, this would be the social coalition that the BJP would espouse. Much will be decided on March 11.

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