How a silent Modi wave uprooted SP-BSP mahagathbandhan in UP

With the 2019 election results in Uttar Pradesh coming out, it seems, the Samajwadi Party (SP)’s ‘cycle tyre’ has  been punctured and the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) elephant has gone berserk.

It seems that the days of caste politics in the Hindi-heartland state are over, forever. The much-hyped Bua-Bhatija mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) in Uttar Pradesh has gone for a six.

The dalit-Muslim-yadav combine just did not work to the favour of the alliance, it seems. And, on the ground, the votes of both parties did not transfer to each other and seems to be the reality of the day. The silent voter went against caste lines and voted in the name of Modi and nationalism.

The SP-BSP alliance failed to make much of a dent on the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. It is evident by the results that the alliance failed to break the rainbow coalition of the non-yadav OBC and non-jatav dalit votes which was rallying strongly behind the BJP in the 2014 general elections and in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. This vote remained firmly with the BJP.

Even the Yadav voter seems to have crossed over to the BJP from the SP fold. In Yadav Patti, as the Yadav stronghold of Uttar Pradesh is called, SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav faced a tough time before leading by a margin lower than fifty thousand. Leaders of his calibre, who used to win by a margin of lakhs, found winning tough this time around. The senior Yadav leader had also made a fervent appeal to the voters of Azamgarh saying that this was his last election. And results show that even the young Yadav voter deserted him this time.

His nephew Dharmendra Yadav, the incumbent MP from Badaun, who claimed that he was very popular in his area, was trailing behind Sanghmitra Maurya of the BJP since counting of votes started.

Kannauj’s MP Dimple Yadav too found it tough against Subrat Pathak of the BJP. She was trailing by a margin of 22,000 votes. Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati had held a joint rally here in her support and on the stage, Dimple had touched the feet to seek Mayawati’s blessings. This was taken as a political optic and a game-changer. But it simply did not seem to work in her favour. Appeasing the Dalit voter could be a factor but the Yadav voter perhaps took offence to this step and drifted to the BJP.

Senior SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav’s son, MP from Firozabad, was trailing in his constituency since morning.

The only saving grace for the SP was its president Akhilesh Yadav who won by a comfortable margin. It seems that the SP-BSP alliance could break soon as both parties would now resort to a blame game.

The clear indication that the days of caste politics in the Hindi-heartland are over should prompt the likes of Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav to introspect.