Casteism, communal appeal at core of political parties’ strategy in UP polls

Lucknow: The BJP has developed its poll narratives around Hindutva and development in the battle for Uttar Pradesh and the Samajwadi Party on welfare schemes based on socialism, but the core of their poll strategies appears to be caste arithmetic and communal fault lines.

Be it the BJP, the SP or the BSP, a look at their list of candidates makes it clear that caste calculation and religious affiliation are the prime considerations in the selection of the nominees for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections. The Congress under its general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is banking on the women voters to capture power in the Hindi heartland.

Sticking to its promise of reserving 40 percent tickets to women, the grand old party is experimenting with greenhorns, like an aganwadi worker, the mother of the Unnao rape victim besides glamorous faces like ‘Bikni girl’ Archana Gautam from Hasinapur in Meerut district, and actoractivist Sadar Jafar.

“No matter how much you talk about vikas (development), the victory in polls hinges on which caste and community is supporting you,” Pitardeen Shukla, an elderly homemaker in Amethi said.

Brajesh Shukla, a poll analyst said in Lucknow, “Nobody can deny ‘jati-dharma’ in rajneeti in UP but there is something else also which is guiding voters’ choice of a party in the polls.”

He said a Muslim e-autorickshaw driver in Hathras told him that the government had provided him monetary assistance to get an artificial limb without asking for his religion and asserted that why he should not support it.

With year-long protests against the three agriculture laws having their echo in western Uttar Pradesh, farmers’ issues are being prominently used by the SP-RLD combine against the BJP in the region where 58 seats will go to vote in 11 districts in the first phase on February 10.

BJP leaders, besides making efforts to prove themselves being pro-farmer, are raking up the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots to allegedly create a wedge between the new friendship of Jats and Muslims, the core support groups of RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, respectively.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) are fighting the assembly polls in alliance. BJP leaders have, during their campaigning, heaped praises on Raja Mahendra Prartap, a Jat icon who played a prominent role in the freedom struggle, to reach out to the electorally important community especially in the western UP.