UP: Why BJP’s Rajya Sabha victory is a prelude to its Lok Sabha ambitions

Just as it did in Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh, the raucous echo of that most treacherous idiom of Indian politics – antaraatma ki awaaz or voice of conscience – drowned the fading gasps of political morality in Uttar Pradesh too, on Tuesday (February 27), as voting concluded for the Rajya Sabha polls. Seven MLAs of the Samajwadi Party (SP) voted for BJP nominees in Uttar Pradesh, leading to the defeat of one of the SP’s three candidates, former state chief secretary Alok Ranjan, in the biennial elections.

Bonus win for BJP

The BJP, which had the legislative strength to ensure an easy win for seven of its candidates – RPN Singh, Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, Amarpal Maurya, Sangeeta Balwant, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Sadhna Singh and Naveen Jain – romped home with a bonus victory for its eighth nominee, businessman and former SP parliamentarian Sanjay Seth. The SP, which was already on shaky ground in the Rajya Sabha polls following the loss of key ally Jayant Chaudhary’s RLD to the NDA last month and subsequently due to the furore over party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s nominees in the election, bagged two of the three vacant seats it had hoped to win on Tuesday.

While SP candidates Jaya Bachchan and Dalit leader Ramjilal Suman secured a comfortable win, Ranjan failed to get the required number of votes of his party after seven Samajwadi MLAs, including the party’s chief whip Manoj Kumar Pandey, heard a collective conscience call prodding them to vote for the BJP.

Telltale signs

Signs that the SP would fall short of the required number of votes to have all three of its candidates elected (for the 10 vacant seats from the state, each candidate required a minimum of 37 first preference votes for victory) had come on Monday itself when some of the party legislators failed to turn up at a meeting called by Akhilesh.

On Tuesday, as polling was about to begin, it became clear that the SP would not just fall considerably short of MLAs to ensure the triumph of its three nominees but that the setback in the offing would hit Akhilesh harder than he, perhaps, imagined.

In quick succession, seven SP MLAs, cutting across caste lines and with varying degrees of electoral influence, lined up alongside their BJP counterparts, invoking their faith in Lord Ram to justify their malleable conscience and ideological promiscuity that had compelled them to vote saffron.

Akhilesh puts up a brave front

Akhilesh, already stung by Jayant Chaudhary’s desertion of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc and the criticism from his own SP colleagues of his decision to field upper caste Jaya Bachchan and Alok Ranjan in the polls instead of backing an OBC or minority leader, tried to put up a brave front. He accused those preparing to cross-vote of lacking “courage to stand up to the government” and alleged that they had either been “intimidated” or “lured in” by the BJP or were “fooled by assurances” given by the saffron leadership.

Seeking to make something good of an evidently bad situation, the SP chief felt it best to fall back on his electoral pitch of PDA (pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) empowerment and claimed that he had put up a third candidate (Ranjan) to “test the commitment” of MLAs to the cause of backward caste, Dalits and religious minorities. Glossing over the irony of the SP failing to field OBC or minority candidates in the Rajya Sabha polls and being chastised by allies such as Apna Dal (Kameravadi) leader Pallavi Singh and former SP MLC Swami Prasad Maurya for the lapse, Akhilesh claimed, “they (those cross-voting in BJP’s favour) stand exposed on their betrayal of PDA.”

What this episode means for Akhilesh, Congress?

The poll result subsequently was, of course, on predictable lines with the BJP securing eight seats in Rajya Sabha instead of the seven that it would have won had the party chosen to play fair. For Akhilesh, though, the political damage could far exceed the immediate loss of a Rajya Sabha seat that should have come to its fold.

Lucknow-based political commentator Sharat Pradhan told The Federal that more than the fact that the BJP succeeded in breaking away some SP MLAs through Tuesday’s vote what was of greater significance how meticulously the saffron party had identified these legislators; each expected to serve a greater electoral purpose in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.

The damage that the BJP hopes to inflict by winning over these MLAs, all of whom are expected to formally join the saffron fold in the coming days, would “not be limited to the SP” but will “also extend to the Congress” in Lok Sabha polls, believes Pradhan.

It can't be mere coincidence that of the seven MLAs who cross-voted for the BJP and another SP MLA, Maharaji Prajapati, who abstained from the voting, three have electoral influence over segments of the Amethi and Rae Bareli Lok Sabha constituencies; the family turf of the Congress’s first family, the Nehru-Gandhis.

Manoj Kumar Pandey and Rakesh Pratap Singh, both once key aides of Akhilesh and now newly-minted BJP assets, are multiple-term MLAs from the Unchahar and Gauriganj assembly segments that fall under the Rae Bareli and Amethi Lok Sabha seats, respectively.

BJP’s careful pick of rebels

Interestingly, even before the cacophony over the cross-voting could die down, the political grapevine in Lucknow was abuzz with speculation that the BJP could field Pandey, a third term MLA from Unchahar and prominent Brahmin leader, as its candidate from Rae Bareli, the lone seat which Sonia Gandhi has represented since 2004 and chosen to vacate this time round by choosing to enter Parliament through the Rajya Sabha route. Prajapati, wife of former minister and rape convict Gayatri Prasad Prajapati, also represents the Amethi assembly seat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly and her jailed husband’s clout across the Amethi Lok Sabha constituency is still said to be significant.

The BJP’s design in getting SP’s third-term Bisauli MLA and Dalit leader Ashutosh Maurya to cross-vote also goes beyond Tuesday’s Rajya Sabha polls. Maurya’s assembly seat falls in the Badaun Lok Sabha constituency from where the SP has recently announced the candidature of Akhilesh’s uncle and party stalwart, Shivpal Yadav. Similarly, Jalalpur MLA Rakesh Pandey, whose son Ambedkar Nagar MP Ritesh Pandey quit Mayawati’s BSP on Sunday to join the BJP, bahubali politician and Goshaiganj (in Ayodhya) MLA Abhay Singh, Pooja Pal, the MLA from Chail and widow of Raju Pal who had been allegedly killed by gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed’s gang (Ahmed was gunned down while in Uttar Pradesh police’s custody last year) and Jalaun MLA Vinod Chaturvedi, all of whom defied the SP to cross-vote in the BJP’s favour, fit the saffron party’s need for political musclemen whose influence goes beyond their immediate assembly segments.

The BJP has also been careful in identifying each of these MLAs from the standpoint of caste arithmetic, which plays an inalienable part in the state’s politics. Those who cross-voted do not belong to a single caste but represent various crucial caste groups – Thakurs, Brahmins, Dalit-Jatavs and backward castes (Muslims being the only predictable exception) – including those that fall under the overarching PDA bloc that Akhilesh has been assiduously trying to woo.

Though Akhilesh may cry foul over the chipping away of his MLAs by the BJP and attribute various factors to it, from fear of central probe agencies to greed for posts or “package deals”, the BJP can be expected to canvass that not just upper caste Hindus but even Dalits and OBCs have clearly chosen it over the SP.

That’s clearly a BJP narrative that is intended not for the Rajya Sabha polls, which are now over, but for the Lok Sabha election that is weeks away. It is in this context that claims by Uttar Pradesh BJP leaders about Tuesday’s poll “not being about eight Rajya Sabha seats but about 80 seats (UP’s share in the Lok Sabha)” should be understood.