© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
SAMAJWADI PARTY chief Akhilesh Yadav has a lot at stake in the coming Lok Sabha elections. Politics is just one part of it. From two seats in the coming two phases, Akhilesh and wife Dimple are contesting. Both these constituencies – Kannauj and Mainpuri, respectively – had been won in the past by SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.
As Akhilesh tries to fill his late father’s shoes, the result in these two adjoining constituencies, which he has chosen to keep close home, will be closely tracked to see how far he has come.
In 2019, Dimple had lost from Kannauj, later winning the Mainpuri seat held by Mulayam in a bypoll, necessitated due to his death.
Days to go for polling – Mainpuri votes on May 7 and Kannauj on May 13 – the Yadavs seem steadfast with the SP. But a section of the non-Yadav OBCs who stayed with the party due to Mulayam’s sway seem to be slipping away.
Mulayam had won Mainpuri five times – 2019, 2014, 2009, 2004 and 1996. Dimple’s win by 2.88 lakh votes in the December 2022 bypoll was huge, but was seen as largely a factor of sympathy vote, with the couple plus Akhilesh’s uncle Shivpal appealing for votes in Mulayam’s name.
DIMPLE YADAV
Dimple, who is still seen as an accidental politician, is largely on her own this time, with Akhilesh tackling his own campaign in Kannauj, plus shouldering the party’s, and Shivpal busy at his son’s seat in Badaun.
The slogans hailing “Netaji”, as Mulayam was referred to, are not as omnipresent, but Dimple clearly knows it remains her calling card. A written appeal by her to voters made repeated references to Netaji, listed the works done by him, and vowed to take forward his ideology.
Among those who feel it is time to move on is Prabhu Ram Lodhi, belonging to Jatpura village, dominated by his OBC Lodh Rajput community. “Netaji used to treat everyone here like his family. But the party’s current leaders are arrogant. My relatives in other constituencies vote for the BJP, and I may do the same.”
Amar Singh Shakya, from adjoining OBC Shakya-dominated Imaliya village, is also reconsidering his options now that Mulayam is no longer around.
Dimple has been spending most of her time in non-Yadav-dominated villages, including Jatwara and Imaliya. The two villages fall in the Bhongaon Assembly seat, where the BJP was considerably ahead even when Mulayam won the seat in 2019.
In the 2022 Assembly elections, of the five segments in the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat, the SP won three and the BJP two. Akhilesh was elected MLA from Karhal while Mulayam’s younger brother Shivpal Singh Yadav won from Jaswantnagar.
While the Yadavs number around 4.5 lakh in the seat, the Shakyas are second at 3.25 lakh, followed by the Lodh Rajputs at 2.15 lakh. The Dalits number around 1.2 lakh and the Muslims about 60,000, with the rest around 3.35 lakh voters being upper caste Thakurs and Brahmins. So, it all depends on how the OBC vote gets split.
SP district president and former minister Alok Shakya has taken on the charge of ensuring that women from Shakya, Pal and Lodh communities are present prominently at Dimple’s meetings. Lodh Rajput leader Kamal Verma talks of the BJP “insulting” his wife by denying her the Mainpuri Nagar Palika chairperson’s post. He blames Jaiveer Singh, the sitting Mainpuri MLA and a Thakur leader, who is the BJP’s Mainpuri Lok Sabha candidate.
The Dimple campaign has also roped in Gulshan Dev Shakya, who was announced and then dropped by the BSP as its candidate from Mainpuri, and Congress leader Vineeta Shakya. Gulshan says this will be enough to chip away at the BJP’s Shakya votes.
As regards the Lodh Rajputs, who hold the late BJP leader and former chief minister Kalyan Singh of the community in high regard, the SP is talking about how Mulayam helped Kalyan win the Lok Sabha seat from Etah in 2009 as an Independent, after Kalyan had quit the BJP.
However, that does not cut much ice with Jawahar Lal, a Lodh, of Jatwara village. Ahead of a Dimple public meeting, he says: “When Babuji (Kaylan Singh) died, Akhilesh did not go to his house to pay tribute. But when a mafia, Mukhtar Ansari, died, he, SP leaders visited Ghazipur.”
At a rally in Mainpuri last week, Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanth also raised this, while underlining how he and other BJP leaders had visited Saifai to pay tributes to Mulayam after his death. He called it an example of the SP’s “bhed-bhao (discrimination)”, suggesting it was “biased” towards Muslims.
One worry for Dimple will be BSP candidate Shiv Prasad Yadav, who is expected to cut into the SP’s Yadav vote. Dimple told The Indian Express she was not worried about this, and would get votes across communities.
The BJP has never won the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat. Laying out their challenge, its district general secretary Bhupendra Yadav says: “The SP takes a decisive lead in Karhel and Jaswantnagar segments, where 90% of the voters are Yadavs.”
As per another BJP leader, the formula for the party to win would be: “90% of the Shakyas supporting the BJP, up from 60% now, and the BSP taking away more than 30,000 Yadav votes from the SP”.
The BSP’s Shiv Prasad Yadav, who runs a school and a dairy business, and has been trying his luck against the Mulayam family in elections for a while, says it would be wrong to rule him out. “I belong to the Ghosi sub-category among the Yadavs. The (Mulayam Singh) Yadav family has destroyed the Ghosis here,” he says.
On May 2, BSP president Mayawati will be addressing a rally in Mainpuri. Akhilesh held programmes in Mainpuri on Wednesday, and will be returning for a rally Thursday.
Back to Dimple, SP leaders say they are facing a unique problem, of SP workers crowding her cavalcade, forcing them to issue appeals that only those concerned with the area she is passing through should be present.
Apart from Dimple, the curiosity is for the latest Yadav on the block: daughter Aditi, 21, a London-returned graduate, who is doing the rounds of the family turf.
AKHILESH YADAV
FAMOUS for its itra and perfume industry, Kannauj is these days resonant with a new whiff. Akhilesh’s last-minute decision to contest from here, replacing nephew and former Mainpuri MP Tej Pratap Yadav, apparently at the behest of local SP workers, has made Kannauj one of the hottest contests of the Lok Sabha elections in UP.
As per SP Kannauj district president Kaleem Khan, it was all planned, with the late decision meaning the BJP got no chance to change its candidate and sitting MP Subrat Pathak, in case it wanted to, after Akhilesh’s nomination. Akhilesh has a point to prove, with Pathak having defeated Dimple from the seat in 2019.
“There were reports that the BJP would drop Pathak fearing a defeat against Akhilesh. But when the SP named Tej Pratap, they thought they could defeat him. Now Akhileshji has made Pathak’s defeat certain,” says Khan.
Kannauj sent a Yadav family member to Parliament in every election from 1999 to 2014, before Dimple’s loss in 2019.
While Muslims constitute 3 lakh voters in Kannauj, the Dalits number around 2.8 lakh, and Yadavs 2.5 lakh. The BJP won last time with a chunk of Yadav and Dalit voters seen as backing it.
Shivam Tiwari, who runs a unit manufacturing essential oils, says Pathak won essentially because of the support of upper castes and Dalits. “He spoke up against the appeasement of Yadavs and Muslims by the SP government,” he says.
Mohd Nayab, an itra and perfume manufacturer, says they remain firm SP supporters. “Because Akhilesh is also the SP national president, the contest has become rochak (interesting). Now SP workers are active in the field. Earlier, they were not.”
Nayab adds that the perfume industry is suffering under the BJP’s
10 years at the Centre. “The government is taking 18% tax (GST) but doing nothing for the industry.”
Abhijeet C Kelkar, who has perfume showrooms in Pune and a manufacturing unit in Kannauj, also complains about the taxes on a “kuteer udyog (cottage industry)” directly associated with farmers.
The SP’s Khan says that apart from Muslims, the party is confident of getting votes of non-Yadav OBCs and upper castes too.
Prafull Kelkar, also a perfume manufacturer, in Bada Bajar area, however, says that while it might be tougher for Pathak to repeat 2019, “I feel he will win because Narendra Modi ji is a great brand.”
The BJP is more confident of Pathak’s win due to the SP and BSP contesting separately this time. In 2019, when the two parties were allied and the Congress too had not put up a candidate against Dimple, he had still won the seat. “This election will be easier as the Dalit and Muslim votes will get divided between the BSP and SP,” says BJP leader Sharad Mishra.
The BSP has fielded Imran Bin Zafar, a leather businessman, who had contested in 2014 from Kannauj as an Aam Aadmi Party candidate and got only 4,826 votes. Zafar is targeting the SP, calling it “a B-team of the BJP”, as much as the BJP. “The SP has no Muslim leadership. They take Muslim votes but give them no representation… Only BSP chief Mayawati is fighting the BJP.”
