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Journalism of Courage
The journey from UP to the prime ministerial chair began with Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, who was Member of Parliament (MP) from Allahabad Dist (East)-cum-Jaunpur Dist (West) (now Phulpur).
He was followed by Lal Bahadur Shastri, an MP from Allahabad (now Prayagraj), and Indira Gandhi, the Lok Sabha MP from Rae Bareli who was prior to that a Rajya Sabha MP from UP. The list doesn’t end here — Charan Singh from Baghpat, Rajiv Gandhi from Amethi, V P Singh from Fatehpur, Chandra Shekhar from Ballia, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee from Lucknow, all went on to become PMs. In all probability, if Narayan Dutt Tiwari had won the 1991 election from Nainital (which was in UP at the time), he, and not P V Narasimha Rao, would have become the PM in 1991.
It is often said, “kendra ki sarkar ka raasta UP se hokar guzarata hai” — the road to the central government passes through UP. Except Gulzarilal Nanda, Morarji Desai, Narasimha Rao, H D Deve Gowda, Inder Kumar Gujral, and Dr Manmohan Singh, the other nine Prime Ministers of India have been either residents of UP or were elected from UP.
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When Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, he was appointed as the chairman of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) election campaign committee on June 9, 2013, for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Three weeks prior to that, on May 19, his close confidant Amit Shah was put in charge of the party in UP. Then, on June 16, 2013, the Congress, which was heading the government at the Centre then, appointed Madhusudan Mistry, the general secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) as incharge of UP. Like Modi and Shah, Mistry too, is from Gujarat. The national focus was on India’s largest state in terms of population and Lok Sabha seats.
On September 13, 2013, Modi was declared as the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP. Clearing all doubts, the BJP announced that Modi would contest from two seats — Varanasi in UP and Vadodara in Gujarat. When he won from both, he retained the former and resigned from the latter. The BJP won 71 (+2 with its ally Apna Dal (S)) of the 80 seats in UP, and Modi became prime minister.
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Landlocked UP borders Nepal and the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, and the Union Territory of Delhi. Much of its area is covered by a deep layer of extremely fertile alluvial soil along the Ganga, the Yamuna and their tributaries.
The political importance of UP becomes clear when we look at the performance of various parties in Lok Sabha elections, and the role of those parties in national politics.
The Congress has formed single-party majority governments at the Centre seven times, and this can be attributed to the substantial number of seats it won in UP. When the Janata Party came to power in 1977, it bagged all 85 seats in the state at the time.
On the other hand, in the Congress’s three coalition regimes, the party won only five out of 85 seats in 1991, nine out of 80 in 2004, and 21 out of 80 in 2009. The coalition government of the United Front (UF) at the Centre in 1996 had the Samajwadi Party (SP) as its crucial ally, but it managed to win only 16 of the 85 seats in the state.
In the BJP’s coalition governments at the Centre, the party had won 57 of 85 seats in UP in 1998, and though the tally was reduced in 1999, it still won 29 out of 85 seats. The BJP’s majority governments at the Centre in 2014 and 2019 had 71 and 62 seats (excluding ally Apna Dal (S)) respectively of the 80 from the state.
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Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, among the most fearless of India’s Opposition leaders, was born in UP and was active in politics in the state; he also reached Lok Sabha from UP. Dr Lohia had mentioned his historic sapta kranti (seven revolutions) for the first time at a training camp of the Samajwadi Yuvajan Sabha (SYS) in Nainital on June 26, 1962. His party’s slogan of “Pichhde paavein sau mein saath” (Other Backward Classes should get 60% (of all opportunities)) got momentum in UP and Bihar.
Jayaprakash Narayan gave his historic speech on sampoorna kranti (total revolution) in Patna, Bihar, on June 5, 1974, but UP was the ground for his experiments. Jayaprakash Narayan founded the Gandhi Vidya Sansthan in Varanasi.
Included in the Janata Party’s sweep of all 85 seats in the state in 1977 was the formerly unshakeable Rae Bareli seat of Indira Gandhi. And it was the Allahabad High Court, the country’s largest High Court, that brought a sitting PM into the witness box and, in its historic judgment of 1975, set aside Indira Gandhi’s election of 1971 from Rae Bareli.
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Besides Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) founder Deen Dayal Upadhyay was from UP. Nanaji Deshmukh and Bhaurao Deoras, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologues, were from Maharashtra, but their field of activities was UP. The second Sarsanghchalak (chief) of the RSS, Madhavrao Sadashiv Golwalkar ‘Guruji’, had studied and taught at the BHU.
The BJS was formed in UP on September 2, 1951, before it was announced at the central level on October 21 the same year. With merely two Lok Sabha seats in the 1984 Lok Sabha election, the BJP started to revamp its strategy by becoming part of the Sangh Parivar’s movement for a Ram temple at Lord Ram’s birthplace in Ayodhya.
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The founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Kanshi Ram, made UP his experimental ground and not his own state of Punjab — even though Punjab has the largest percentage of Scheduled Castes (SCs) in an Indian state.
UP, by virtue of its size though, has the largest number of SC individuals, and offers an opportunity for parties to work towards uplifting this section of society in particular. Kanshi Ram changed the dynamics of UP politics and was actively involved in its political affairs for several years.
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Three CMs of UP — G B Pant, Sucheta Kripalani, and Kamalapati Tripathi — were members of the Constituent Assembly. Two UP CMs, G B Pant and Charan Singh, have been awarded the Bharat Ratna, while Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kalyan Singh have been honoured with the Padma Vibhushan in recognition of their significant contributions to Indian society and politics.
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Under British rule, the political map and system of government in UP were in constant flux. Between 1775 and 1834, this region was under the Bengal Presidency. In November 1834, it was separated from the Bengal Presidency and a new presidency was established in Agra.
Initially, Allahabad was established as the capital of the Agra Presidency, but the capital was shifted to Agra in 1836, and the presidency was renamed as North-Western Provinces. In February 1856, Oudh (Awadh) was annexed by the British, and in 1858, the capital was moved back to Allahabad.
In 1902, the region was renamed as the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and, in 1921, the capital was shifted to Lucknow. There was a further change in its name in 1937, when it was renamed as the United Provinces. Finally, on 24 January 1950, it got its present name.
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The giant size of UP, and the outsize influence that it has in shaping the policies and politics of India, has been a bone of contention. Following protests from the southern states, the number of Lok Sabha seats in the state has remained frozen since 1976, even though it can be argued that high population growth should have resulted in more seats in the state.
As per the 2011 census, the population of UP was 19.98 crore, accounting for 16.51 per cent of the total population of the country. With 240,928 sq. km (7.33 per cent of the total area of the country), UP is the fourth largest in terms of area. The 75 districts in the state are divided into 18 divisions, 351 tehsils, 826 development blocks, and 58,189 gram panchayats with 1.07 lakh villages. Its society, economic status, dialects, farming, village life, city life and eating habits as well as its rituals and local festivals vary from region to region.
But more than all of the above, what adds to the importance of UP is that the state has 80 Lok Sabha seats (14.7 per cent of the total seats), 31 seats (12.4 per cent of total seats) in Rajya Sabha, 403 Assembly seats (9.77 per cent of the total seats of all state Assemblies) and 100 seats in the Legislative Council.
It is one of only six states (the others being Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, and Bihar) that have an Upper House of the state legislature. As a result, UP has acquired political importance that is arguably incomparable to any other state in India.
Edited excerpts from Shyamlal Yadav‘s recently published book ‘At The Heart of Power: The Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh’; Rupa, 2024
