Last stretch a litmus test of BJP’S Obc-connect strategy
The last phase of polling in Uttar Pradesh would prove to be a litmus test of the strategies and alliances forged by the BJP to win over state’s non-yadav other backward class (OBC) voters.
The saffron party entered into a pact with Union minister Anupriya Patel’s Apna Dal and Om Prakash Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party to bring state’s non-yadav OBCS on board. Patel and Rajbhar hold sway over the OBC communities of Kurmi and Rajbhar, both of which have significant presence in eastern Uttar Pradesh where polling is scheduled to take place on Wednesday.
Forty assembly segments of Purvanchal will vote during the final phase of polling and the BJP is hopeful of a good show. “We will sweep the region,” Union minister Santosh Gangwar said. BJP’S winning formula for UP is based on the premise that it would get the overwhelming support of the upper castes, non-yadav backward communities and the non-jatav Dalits
In 2012, the SP had swept the Purvanchal region winning majority of seats in every district, except Varanasi and Chandauli.
The BJP is banking on its allies and a new social base the party believes it has created for itself under Modi, who also comes from an OBC background, to win over the region this time around.
The BJP needs to sweep the last two rounds of election in UP— covering 89 seats of Purvanchal— to make up for the loss it is expected to have suffered in the first two rounds of polling in Muslim-majority districts.
As the polling moved towards eastern UP, the concentration of OBC communities grew and Muslims decreased. The change in voter demography also appears to be the reason behind BJP shift ing its strategy and attempting to ‘polarise voters’ with “kabristan shamshan”-like remarks from the PM.
BJP strategists claim that the change in its discourse was part of the strategy to consolidate grip over the majority population Non-yadav OBCS of Purvanchal have traditionally voted for May awati’s BSP but gravitated towards the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, when BJP pre sented Modi as the “son of a back ward”.