UP round 3 over: Akhilesh, BJP ooze confidence as Maya speaks of surprise

As 59 constituencies spread across 16 districts went for polls in Phase 3 of the ongoing seven-phase Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, prime challenger to the ruling BJP, claimed that his multi-party pre-poll alliance had moved closer to victory, with wins guaranteed for the coalition’s candidates on over 100 of the 172 seats for which polling has now concluded.

Predictably, the BJP has scoffed at Yadav’s claims and insisted on an imminent saffron victory, while Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), despite running a low decibel campaign, too asserted it was closing in on a surprise win.

Political commentators believe that with the third round of polling, UP has now entered a crucial phase of the electoral process. The first two phases were held across 58 and 55 seats of western UP and Rohilkhand districts where the SP and its key alliance partner, Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), were tipped to take the lead over the BJP, owing to concentration of agrarian communities worst hit by the Narendra Modi government’s controversial, and now repealed, farm laws.

With the third phase, the electoral process has now entered regions where the BJP had, in 2017, made significant inroads into erstwhile bastions of its key rivals – the SP and the BSP – and where the saffron party believes it is still holding ground. The 59 poll-bound seats on February 20 were spread across districts of central UP and Bundelkhand where the 2017 saffron wave had decimated SP and BSP citadels in Etah, Etawah, Kasganj, Firozabad, Kannauj, Kanpur and Jhansi. Of these 59 seats, the BJP had, in 2017, won 49 while the SP could bag only eight and the BSP and Congress were limited to one seat each.

Yadav, as his public statements and vastly successful road shows suggest, is fast gaining ground in the hope of not just reclaiming lost SP strongholds from the BJP but also picking up additional seats on the back of a campaign that has, arguably, tapped into voter resentment on issues of price rise, unemployment and deteriorating social cohesion. The Karhal constituency in Mainpuri district, a Samajwadi stronghold from which Yadav is making his debut as an Assembly poll candidate, also voted in the third phase. Yadav had claimed that of several reasons for choosing Karhal as his seat was also the fact that the constituency would vote in the earlier part of the month-long poll process in UP that will stretch till March 7 and this would “free me to campaign across the state without having to spend a lot of time in my constituency”.

The SP chief is hoping that his alliance, which has stitched together a caste-coalition for consolidating votes of backward castes (including the SP vote bank of Yadavs and that of non-Yadav backward communities that had shifted significantly to the BJP), Muslims and non-Jatav Dalits, would help him dismantle the social engineering formula that was instrumental in the BJP’s national and UP-centric victories in 2014, 2017 and 2019.

Also read: UP campaign: Modi likely to jump in to square up Yogi’s inadequacies

Ground reports do suggest that the SP is succeeding in its consolidation of Muslim, Yadav and non-Yadav backward caste votes. However, there are also enough reasons for the aspiring second-term CM to be cautious moving ahead for the remaining phases of the poll.

For starters, SP insiders admit that the party’s failure to court the overarching and numerically formidable Dalit vote bank, split now between Mayawati’s BSP and the BJP, with as much as zeal as it is pursuing the Muslim, OBC or Brahmin voters could hurt the party’s prospects.

“The BSP may have started late with its campaign and Mayawati may not be as aggressive in this election as she has been in earlier polls, but our surveys suggest that her core votebank of Jatavs (nearly 12 percent of UP’s population) is almost entirely intact while in several constituencies where other non-Jatav Dalit communities that are unhappy with the BJP are also rallying behind the BSP and not the SP. If voter turnout continues to be moderate in the remaining phases and an undercurrent for the BSP picks up among the Dalit voters, it may prove costly for us because on many seats the fight is expected to be three or even four-cornered and the victory margins may be far narrower than they were in 2017. So if BSP, or even the Congress in some pockets, cuts into anti-BJP votes, our candidates may lose narrowly,” a senior SP leader, involved with the party’s campaign in central UP and Bundelkhand districts, told The Federal.

Ravi Kant Chandan, a Dalit activist and professor at Lucknow University, said that the SP had made a “huge mistake by assuming that Dalits are unhappy with the BJP will vote for it because Behenji (a popular moniker for Mayawati) hadn’t been active on the ground for a long time”.

“According to information I have collected from the constituencies that voted in the first three phases, I feel the Dalits – both Jatavs and several non-Jatavs – are silently mobilising for BSP again while the OBCs and Muslims are consolidating behind the SP-led alliance. In the third phase, there are reports of Mayawati’s 2007 Dalit-Brahmin formula also working in BSP’s favour though not yet in the same volume as 2007. I think the BJP is staring at a loss of at least five to seven percent vote, and 30 seats, in the third phase alone but the SP isn’t the sole gainer. The BSP is likely to improve its tally in the Bundelkhand districts while the Congress may also spring a surprise in some urban constituencies,” Chandan told The Federal, asserting that the election was still too close to call.

Also read: In UP, BJP hopes lie in splintering of Dalit and Muslim votes

For the BJP, which is hoping to win a second consecutive term through a viciously acerbic and communally polarising campaign, maximising its tally in the fourth and fifth phases of polling scheduled for February 23 and 27 respectively, is key. The 120 seats spread across districts such as Pilibhit, Kheri, Sitapur, Hardoi, Lucknow, Unnao, Rae Bareli, Barabanki, Amethi, Gonda, Ayodhya, Sultanpur and Prayagraj, which will vote in the fourth and fifth phase, are largely considered to be constituencies where the BJP is currently leading over its rivals as the anti-BJP vote is not consolidating in favour of any one Opposition party.

Similarly, the final two phases of polling, scheduled for March 3 and March 7, predominantly across districts in eastern UP, is expected to see a bitterly close contest between the BJP and the SP-led alliance.

For Yadav, SP sources say, the “real campaign” to wrest power in UP has only just begun and the challenges are already mounting with a seemingly resurgent BSP and even the Congress pitted to make surprise gains.

Meanwhile, Lucknow is also abuzz with conspiracy theories of the BJP transferring its votes to Mayawati’s candidates in seats where its own candidates are on a sticky wicket – a bargain that could be mutually beneficial to the BJP and BSP once the poll results are announced on March 10.

With polls for Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa now over, the BJP is also preparing to dial up its campaign blitzkrieg for UP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, nearly all BJP CMs, a majority of the Union Council of ministers and party MPs and MLAs from various states are expected to devote most of the next fortnight to the party’s UP campaign.

Also read: Polling begins for Phase 2 of UP election, 586 candidates in fray

Modi has already identified the SP as the BJP’s prime rival in his campaign speeches, while holding back his punches on the BSP. If Modi’s appalling analogy of 38 terror accused recently convicted for the 2008 Gujarat bombings using cycles – the SP poll symbol – to plant explosives, is any indication, Yadav is heading towards extremely vicious poll rhetoric.