UP CM Yogi Adityanath with Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya
Credit: PTI Photo
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s leaders in Uttar Pradesh have publicly attributed the party’s dismal performance in the state in the recent Lok Sabha elections to “falsehood spread by the opposition on the issue of reservation’’.
Some of them have also blamed “over-confidence” within the party. But what almost all of them privately admit is that a large section of the Dalit voters, who had supported the saffron party in the earlier elections, deserted it in the LS polls and thus severally damaged its electoral prospects.
Of the 17 reserved LS seats in the state, the BJP had won 15 in the 2019 LS polls losing only Nagina and Lalganj seats to the Bahujan Samaj Party, which had contested the elections in alliance with the Samajwadi Party. In 2014, the BJP had won all the reserved seats in the state. In the 2004 LS polls, the BJP had managed to win only three reserved seats in the state.
But, in the recent LS polls, the BJP could win only eight reserved seats while the SP managed to win seven. The Congress and the Azad Samaj Party of Chandrashekhar, a.k.a. Ravan, won one seat each.
In the 2022 assembly polls, the BJP had won 65 of the 84 reserved seats and formed its government in the state. In 2017, the saffron party had fared even better on the reserved seats winning a whopping 71 seats.
The Dalits constitute about 21% of the population in the state and the voters from the community were the deciding factor not only on the reserved seats but also on many other seats.
“It was inconceivable that Dalits could support the SP. It was said in Uttar Pradesh that Yadav and Jatav never voted together. But, in the LS polls, there were clear indications that a large section of Dalits had voted for the SP,” says J P Shukla, a political analyst based in Lucknow. He adds that the Dalits might not have shifted loyalty to the SP but have voted for I.N.D.I.A, which included the Congress. “It should be kept in mind that Dalits once formed the core vote bank of Congress”.
The I.N.D.I.A, comprising SP and Congress, realised that the BSP's grip on its traditional Dalit voters had loosened considerably and that the Lok Sabha seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SC) would be playing a crucial role in stopping the BJP juggernaut in Uttar Pradesh. The two parties had decided to focus on its 'PDA' (Pichda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) formula in the state for parliamentary elections. The SP had coined the slogan 'abki bar PDA’ in the LS polls.
Almost immediately after the LS polls results were declared, B L Santosh, the general secretary of the BJP, held a meeting with the Dalit leaders of the UP unit of the party to discuss and ascertain the reasons behind the desertion. The emergence of Bhim Army founder and firebrand Dalit leader Chandrashekhar as a popular leader among the community was also discussed in the meeting as well as the ways to counter the same.
The desertion of the Dalits has alarmed the BJP. The party has decided to embark upon a massive Dalit outreach programme in the state. The party’s senior Dalit leaders were asked to meet the community members across the state and remove any misconceptions they might be having. Senior UP BJP leader and deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya’s eagerness to know if the SC/ST reservation guidelines were followed by the state government in making contractual appointments also showed that the party was keen to win back the Dalits.