Azamgarh bypoll campaign at fever pitch, BSP’s ‘local vs outsiders’ pitch takes hold

The SP has fielded Akhilesh’s cousin and former Badaun MP Dharmendra Yadav and is banking on its core voter base of Yadavs and Muslims to retain the seat that the SP chief won in 2019 and party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav bagged five years earlier. The BJP has once again placed its trust on Bhojpuri actor-singer Dinesh Lal Yadav “Nirahua” who lost to Akhilesh in 2019. The ruling party has its task cut out as it lost all five Assembly segments in Azamgarh — Gopalpur, Sagri, Mubarakpur, Azamgarh Sadar, and Mehnagar — in the state elections earlier this year.

The BSP, which won only one Assembly seat in the elections this year, has fielded its former MLA Shah Alam, popularly known as Guddu Jamali, with the hopes of getting the Muslim community’s support along with Dalit votes. Jamali, a businessman, recently rejoined the BSP after losing the state elections from Mubarakpur earlier this year on an All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) ticket.

Making the local candidate versus “outsiders” argument that seems to have resonated with some voters, Jamali told The Indian Express, “The public will elect me because I am a local and people have seen my devotion. I have been MLA from Mubarakpur for 10 years. They know and understand me. Others (the BJP and the SP) have come from outside and will return at the end of the polls. People did not find Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh in the constituency after the elections. Nirahua is from Ghazipur but lives in Mumbai. I am a local man and more accessible. I understand the problems here. Other candidates don’t know this area.”

To blunt his line of attack, Dharmendra Yadav recently spent around four hours at a workers’ meeting in Sathiyaon in Mubarakpur and let regional leaders of the SP and the party’s ally Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party address the crowd first. At the event, several Muslim leaders appealed to the crowd to vote for the SP to restore “Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (Hindu-Muslim syncretism)” and set the foundation for dislodging the BJP from power in 2024.

“While the BJP and SP candidates are outsiders, Jamali is a local leader. He helped people with free oxygen cylinders and food during the Covid pandemic. Neither the BJP nor the SP leaders helped people. He will get the votes of Muslims, along with Dalits and backwards, because of his reputation,” Mumtaj Ahmed, who lives in Mubarakpur’s Jamudi village.

In the adjoining hamlet of Asaul, villager Numan Ahmed said, “Muslims hold the key in this by-elections. Both the SP and the BSP will get Muslim votes. The result will depend on who gets the maximum Muslim votes. Muslims are upset with Akhilesh because of his silence on Muslim-related issues recently but again the strong Yadav vote bank puts Dharmendra Yadav in a better position to challenge the BJP. Jamali will get Dalit votes, but here there are fewer Dalits compared to Yadavs.”

All three candidates have been drawing crowds to their public meetings, with Nirahua’s events a big hit among the youth because of his popularity in the region. In 2019, when he finished second behind Akhilesh, the SP and the BSP had contested in alliance and a large chunk of the Mayawati-led party’s Dalit votes had transferred to the SP president.

But the popular actor has to contend with some Muslim voters’ anger with the BJP over recent incidents related to the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi and the police action against protesters demonstrating against now-suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s objectionable remarks about the Prophet.

“Have you seen the way young boys were beaten up by the security forces during the protest against Nupur Sharma? Is that justified?” asked Jiauddin, a resident of Magrawan village in the SC-reserved Assembly segment of Mehnagar.

Jiauddin, who claims to run a YouTube channel on local news, said if the SP was sure of receiving the support of Yadavs and Muslims it should have fielded a local leader. “Every time, why does somebody from one family in Saifai contest here?” he asked.

In the village of Bisham nearby, where Jatav Dalits have a strong presence, voters appeared committed to electing the BSP candidate. They said that in the past governments led by the party had given them “social security”.

Gopal Yadav, a resident of Mahaliya village in Mubarakpur, said the Akhilesh Yadav government had restarted a sugar mill in the area and began land acquisition for the Purvanchal Expressway that passes through the constituency. Though not happy with the SP’s decision to field Dharmendra, Gopal’s brother Jagdish said he would vote for the Opposition party because he is “Yadav”.

In the Yadav-dominated Hariharpur village in Azamgarh Sadar, where a government display board claims that the village had been electrified in 2020 under its “Saubhagya Yojana”, farmer Harilal Yadav said he would vote for the SP. “Nirahua is also Yadav but his identity is that of a film actor. Dharmendra Yadav is from family of Neta ji (Mulayam Singh Yadav),” Harilal said. He claimed that a majority of the houses in his village had got electricity connections during Akhilesh’s tenure as chief minister and that the Yogi Adityanath government had only built on the schemes launched by the SP-led administration.

But Rakesh Yadav rejected Harilal’s claim. “Yogi ji has removed the loopholes in the government system. Now, we are not dependent on middlemen to get work done in government offices and we are getting the due amount for our crops and hard work,” said Rakesh who was in the village to take his sister, a newlywed, back home to Ambedkar Nagar.

The BJP has deployed two Yadav leaders to help its candidate swing some of the SP’s Yadav votes. Minister of State Girish Chandra Yadav is in charge of the bypoll and has been camping in the area since the bypoll was announced and has been canvassing for Nirahua among Yadavs. Since June 13, the ruling party has also sent in Rajya Sabha MP Sangeeta Yadav for campaigning.

“The BJP will win this election because of the work done by the BJP governments in UP and Centre,” said Girish Chandra Yadav. “The people of Azamgarh want a change this time. They do not want ‘udhaar ka neta (referring to Dharmendra)’.”

When pointed out that Nirahua too was not from the constituency, the minister said, “Nirahua is from an adjoining area. Ghazipur is nearer than Saifai (Mulayam’s home town).”

At Nirahua’s events, his fellow Bhojpuri actors, including Amrapali Dubey, have been making appearances while the SP has deployed singers such as Harikesh Kumar Pagla and Vijay Lal Yadav for Dharmendra Yadav’s rallies. The SP candidate on Tuesday said at a public meeting in Deopaar in Sagri that a victory in the bypoll would put a brake on the “BJP’s speed” and send out a strong message ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Back to BJP?

Another important electoral group in the area is the Kurmi-OBC Patel community who generally vote for the BJP but chose the SP in Sagri in the last state polls. There are almost 47,000 Patel voters in the Assembly segment.

In the Patel-dominated village of Bankatiya, farmer Ranjeet Singh Patel said the SP’s Hridaya Narayan Singh Patel was the only Patel candidate in Azamgarh in the election earlier this year and the community voted for him as it expected the Opposition party to come to power. “But now in Lok Sabha polls, it is better to give a chance to Nirahua because he is close to both the chief minister and the prime minister and can get development works sanctioned for Azamgarh,” he added.

Ranjeet Singh said BJP was weak in Azamgarh because of both caste equations and a lack of government initiatives for the area’s development. “The BJP did nothing for development in Azamgarh in the past six years. The SP government set up the PGI hospital where my sister-in-law is getting treatment. Earlier, we used to rush to Lucknow for treatment in serious cases.”

Sanjay Patel, another villager, said, “We are hoping that the ruling party’s candidate can ensure better development in our area. Further, the BJP gave respect to our caste by inducting Anupriya Patel and her husband Ashish Patel of Apna Dal (Sonelal) into its governments.”

But both Ranjeet and Sanjay said Nirahua’s only drawback was that he was not from the area and that the ruling party would have been in a better position had it given a ticket to a local.

There are around 18 lakh voters in the Azamgarh parliamentary constituency, with Dalits comprising most of the electorate at around four lakh. They are followed by an almost equal number of Yadavs, and three lakh Muslims. Almost 90 per cent of the Dalits are from the Jatav community that votes for the BSP. The Yadav largely support the SP and Muslim votes get divided between the SP and the BSP. Non-Yadav OBC votes and upper-caste support go to the BJP.

The SP and the BSP have won a combined eight times in Azamgarh in the last 10 elections because of the Dalit, Muslim and Yadav voter base. The BJP managed to win the constituency in 2009 when its candidate was Ramakant Yadav. Yadavs have won the seat eight times in the last 10 elections while Muslim candidates have won it twice.