The massive victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) Assembly elections has proved that the party’s “social engineering” strategy to bring in non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav SCs, formulated by party president Amit Shah, worked perfectly to push the BJP to its largest ever tally of over 300 seats in the state.
The BJP’s “aggressive strategy” to win over non-Yadav OBCs like Kurmis, Koeris, Lodhs, Telis, Kumhars and Kahars, translated into a sweeping majority for the party, political observers say.
“The BJP started to work on the strategy of caste calculations right after the Lok Sabha elections and in the Assembly elections, it gave nearly 50% tickets to non-Yadav OBCs, with Koeris (Mauryas, Kushwahas, Shakyas etc), Kurmis (Patels, Chaudharys and Vermas), Lodhs and Nishads, who form the majority of non-Yadav OBCs. The BJP also replaced upper caste leaders with non-Jatav SCs and non-Yadav OBCs which resulted in the party getting a landslide victory in UP,” said Professor Badri Narayan, a political commentator and Dalit writer.
Before the announcement of the schedule for the UP elections, the BJP had replaced its state president Lakshmi Kant Bajpai with Keshav Prasad Maurya, an OBC, and SC leader Swami Prasad Maurya was brought in from the BSP.
The BJP alliance had executed the same strategy in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in which it had won 73 seats in UP.
“BJP’s alliance partners, the Apna Dal (S) and the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), have their support bases among the OBCs. The Apna Dal (S) of Anupriya Patel is considered to be a face of Kurmis. Similarly, the SBSP, led by Om Prakash Rajbhar, has its base among the Rajbhars in Purvanchal,” Narayan said. Professor M.P. Singh of Delhi University pointed to another factor. “The undercurrent against ‘pseudo liberals’ and consolidation of the votes of Brahmins, who constitute 12% of the population in UP, and those of Rajputs or Thakurs, who constitute 7% of the population, worked in favour of the BJP,” Singh said.
Manindra Nath Thakur, a political scientist from JNU, said: “Resentment among Dalit leaders for not getting proper representation in the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the family turf war in the Samjawadi Party (SP) worked in BJP’s favour. Similar to the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP alliance succeeded in luring the non-Yadav OBCs and non- Jatav SCs voters.”
Although the BSP managed to secure 22% of the vote share in UP — which is more than what it got in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections — it could not translate that into seats. “It’s not surprising that the BSP failed to convert its vote share into seats, as the party has drastically failed to keep intact its core voters. However, there is a probability that the Muslims have voted for the BSP due to which its vote share has increased,” Thakur said.
According to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), in the last Lok Sabha elections, 45% of non-Jatav SCs had voted for the BJP.
In the 2009 general elections, 53% non-Jatav SCs had supported Mayawati’s BSP. In terms of caste share, OBCs constitute about 45% of the total population in UP. Yadavs form about 9%, but are dominant in both politics and agriculture in the state.