Why Mayawati is BJP's best hope to stop Akhilesh-Rahul storm from sweeping UP
BJP president Amit Shah is now saying that the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and not the Samajwadi Party (SP), is its main rival in the ongoing Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls — at least in the first two phases.
Third phase onwards, there may be a straight fight between the SP-Congress alliance and the BJP. As far as the areas that voted in the first phase are concerned, the SP had bagged a strong 34 seats in 2012 while its ally Congress won 3 followed by the BSP, which got 18 seats.
The question is why then is the BJP president positioning the BSP as its main rival across 11 districts that have voted till now? Probably, the BJP is banking on a split in the Muslim votes or at least in a position to affect election results in areas like Moradabad, Bijnor, Amroha and Rampur.
A split in the Muslim votes will only help the BJP which has, at least going by 2014 numbers, a significant support base among the upper caste population and the non-Yadav and some non-Jathav OBCs.
Prime time TV is awash with how well parties have fared in the first phase. Frankly speaking, I do not know whether this tantamounts to violation of the Election Commission's guidelines, or the pundits have found a way around.
 |
| Can the BJP stop them? |
Well, with another half-a-dozen phases still in the offing, can political parties afford not to sing their own paeans. Who is leading the race is not yet clear.
What is clear, however, (following reports trickling in from stingers and bureaux) is that the BSP has done well, much better than what the pre-poll surveys predicted.
Mayawati with a low-key but sustained campaign has managed to make substantial headway. Her dedicated vote bank seemingly has not jumped ship.
The question that remains is whether the numbers will be enough to propel her to the top? The BSP has gone all out to woo the Muslim voters. But will that be enough?
Now, if the Muslim electorate vote tactically, that is, if they decide to vote for the candidate who is most likely to defeat the BJP, it will probably divert a major chunk of votes to the SP-Congress combine.
The Rampur strongman, Azam Khan, and his son Abdullah Azam were in contention in the first phase.
Azam Khan by far is the best-known Muslim face in Uttar Pradesh and in all probability, as he has done often in the past, may sway a significant amount of votes for the SP-Congress alliance.
The Congress of 2017 is no longer a major player in north-west UP except in a few places and the party would hope that those voters will support its alliance partner SP too. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has walked the extra mile and has centred his campaign mostly around the election as a referendum to PM Modi's performance and demonetisation (rather than just talking about the SP government's achievements in the state).
The BJP, like in every election since 2014, is banking on the charisma of PM Modi to upset the social engineering of other parties. Modi has been on the offensive and has taken on the SP in its pocket bouroughs of Badaun, Lakhimpur Kheri and Bijnor.
He mainly focussed on the failures of the Akhilesh Yadav government, especially on the law-and-order front. Other prominent BJP leaders who have campaigned for BJP in the first phase, including Union minister Santosh Gangwar and state BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya, stuck to Modi's line of campaigning besides looking to mobilise the sizeable non-Yadav OBC vote.
Union minister Maneka Gandhi has campaigned in the BJP stronghold of Pilibhit, while son Varun stayed away.
Shah is mostly exuding hope of winning 90 seats in the first two phases (which have 140 seats in the fray) and that means sweeping close to two-thirds of the seats. Even for a diehard BJP supporter that seems like a long shot. Only an undercurrent for PM Modi, split in opponents' votes and an wondrously accurate prediction of its own votes would get it anywhere close to those numbers.
In fact, a resurgent Mayawati seems to be the best hope, as of now, for the BJP to stop the Akhilesh-Rahul combine in its tracks.