How BJP plans to counter the caste arithmetic in UP
MATHURA/NEWDELHI: After the first round of elections in Uttar Pradesh, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is facing a united challenge from the state’s two main opposition groups, the party has redoubled efforts to reach out to Dalit and Other Backward Class electorates to drive home the message that it does not differentiate between voters on the basis of caste.
This, according to people aware of the development, is being done to counter the caste arithmetic of the coalition of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), arch rivals-turned-allies, which are counting on the support of Dalits, OBCS and minorities. They also have another partner in Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in a state where caste faultlines run deep.
Ahead of Thursday’s second phase of polling in Agra, Aligarh, Amroha, Bulandshahr, Fatehpur Sikri, Hathras, Mathura and Nagina; cadre of the BJP and footsoldiers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), its ideological mentor, have been visiting households, particularly in Dalitand Obc-dominated areas, to talk about the “inclusivity” of central schemes such as the Ujjwala Yojna and Jan Dhan.
Under Ujjawala, the Bjp-led government at the Centre is offering free gas connections to poor households. Jan Dhan is aimed at promoting financial inclusion, to ensure that every household has a bank account and access to basic financial services.
Contact programmes have intensified following feedback from the RSS after the April 11 first phase of elections, where the overall polling percentage dipped from 2014’s 66.52% to 63.69%.
While the BJP is counting the 220 million beneficiaries of its various schemes as a pan-india vote bank; the RSS is learnt to have cautioned the party that a dip in the voter turnout could lower its chances of winning. In 2014, the party won 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP.
The Sangh’s message to the BJP is to take the message of inclusivity to far- flung and even sparsely populated villages. “We have been given the instruction to knock on every door,” said a volunteer of the RSS on condition of anonymity.
“The BJP faces a challenge in several key seats from the Jat-dominated RLD, the Dalit-centric politics of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Yadav- and Muslim-dominated politics of the SP. In such a scenario it has to show the voters how selection on the basis of caste will be a wrong choice,” said a senior RSS functionary in Mathura on condition of anonymity.
In Mathura, where the BJP is eyeing half of the 20% OBC vote share and half of the 20% Jat vote share, the party has to assuage the anger of the farmers and tradinc community.
Even as it has promised to double farm incomes by 2022 and claims to have increased the minimum support price of crops to 1.5 times the cost of production, farmers across the state are unhappy over unpaid dues for sugarcane and having to sell their produce in the open market.
In Mathura, for instance, farmers complain that the government, despite announcing that it will purchase wheat at ₹1,840 per quintal, had not done so. “They said all purchases will be done by April 1; they have not even begun and we are being forced to sell in the open market for ₹1,600 per quintal,” a farmer in Mathura said.