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Alliance power, turncoats in focus as UP polls enter last lap
Alliance partners of SP and BJP busy addressing rallies in support of the biggies. And even when they aren’t, the alliance appeal is symbolically present in rallies of their big partners
LUCKNOW Alliance power is on full display as the seven-phase UP elections enter the last lap in the eastern part of the state.
Tactical alliances that the biggies, including the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its main challenger, the Samajwadi Party (SP), have stitched with smaller Other Backward Castes (OBC), are now on test. So is the perceived influence of turncoats who switched sides just ahead of the high-stake polls.
The alliances and turncoats would be in focus with major players counting on them big time. The BJP’s OBC partners Nishad party, comprising riverine community members of fishermen and boatmen and Apna Dal (Sonelal), largely a party of kurmi backers (a numerically dominant OBC sub-caste), are regularly sharing stage with BJP leaders.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, who was seen sharing stage mostly with Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Jayant Chaudhary in western UP, is now being seen with his other pre-poll partners – the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, Janwadi Party, Mahaan Dal and Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) in east UP.
Such is the demand that alliance partners of both SP and BJP are busy addressing rallies in support of the biggies. And even when they aren’t, the alliance appeal is symbolically present in rallies of their big partners.
Akhilesh Yadav’s rally in Ballia was an example. The party’s candidate here is Narad Rai, a former minister who had recently broken down on seeing the BJP flag at his residence. Rai is up against the UP BJP’s vice-president Daya Shankar Singh. During Yadav’s rally, Rai wore the familiar red Samajwadi cap, but a yellow coloured stole also rested on his shoulder even as along with SP flags, the yellow-coloured flags of SBSP fluttered among the audience.
“Ab toh Samajwadiyon ke saath peela bhi aa gaya hai... bhajapa saaf ho jayegi (Now, the yellow too is with us. The BJP will be wiped out),” Akhilesh said in his rally.
From the BJP stage, while Modi has been appealing to people to vote for the party and its allies, Nishad party chief Sanjay Nishad and Apna Dal (Sonelal) leader and union minister Anupriya Patel have been making appeals to their core voters to vote for the BJP alliance. “The cycle is punctured now,” Anupriya is saying in her rallies. Anupriya even campaigned against her sister and Samajwadi Party candidate, Pallavi Patel, from Sirathu assembly segment of Kaushambi where deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya is contesting from.
Earlier in January, to show respect for his allies, Akhilesh Yadav had made Pallavi’s mother Krishna Patel, who heads Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) sit on the centre chair during a joint meeting of allies. Both Patel and Nishad are in great demand in eastern UP. “I am doing an average of four rallies per day. There is such demand from BJP candidates because the alliance vote is crucial here,” said Nishad party leader Sanjay Nishad whose son Praveen is a BJP MP from Sant Kabirnagar.
In 2018 Lok Sabha bypolls, Praveen had won from Gorakhpur assembly seat on the Samajwadi Party ticket. Realizing the importance of support of riverine community, the BJP won the Nishad party over to its side in 2019 LS polls and has been together since. Apna Dal (Sonelal) has been a BJP ally since 2014.
The BJP has left out 17 seats for Apna Dal (Sonelal) while leaving out 16 seats for the Nishad party, including nine of those seats that BJP had lost even in its 2017 sweep of UP polls. One such seat is Tamkuhiraj – an assembly segment in Kushinagar from where despite his party’s rout in 2012 and 2017, Ajay Kumar Lallu, an OBC and the present state chief of the Congress, has been winning for two successive terms and is now hoping to make a hat-trick of wins from the region.
As for Apna Dal (Sonelal), in its case, many of the seats allotted to it are those where the BJP had won in 2017. Political experts were quick to notice that by fielding alliance candidate on seats that it won in previous polls, the BJP is engaged in beating anti-incumbency against the local lawmaker besides capitalising on the alliance’s caste calculus.
Similarly, Akhilesh Yadav who left 33 seats for the Jat-dominated Rashtriya Lok Dal, has left out 18 seats for SBSP and 7 for the Apna Dal (Kamerawadi). The SP also left out one seat each for Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) and the Nationalist Congress Party.
In a few seats like Sirathu, it fielded Apna Dal candidates on its symbol. Besides allies, the influence of turncoats would also be on test. Key turncoats in the last two east UP rounds include former minister in Yogi Adityanath government Swami Prasad Maurya, who is contesting from Fazilnagar assembly segment of Kaushambi and another former minister Dara Singh Chauhan, who is contesting from Ghosi, assembly segment of Mau.
Both Maurya and Chauhan are contesting from newer seats this time but more than their individual wins, it is their influence on adjoining seats that will be on test, political experts agree.
“Both turncoats and allies, whether for the BJP or the SP, are being expected to not just win their seats but also influence voters in the favour of their allies in other seats. More than individual wins, this would be on test. Whosoever manages that, will walk away a winner,” said Athar Siddiqui of the Centre for Objective Research and Development.
