Whose card will run

New Delhi. The first phase of voting for the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections is on February 10. As this date is approaching, the election strategy of every party is becoming clear. Since the main contest here is between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party. Therefore, the strategy of both these parties can be considered. In these, while the BJP seems to be revolving around Hindutva, the SP has woven its mathematics around the Other Backward Classes. But the question arises, which of these cards will work? And what is the status till now?

In Uttar Pradesh, when Mulayam Singh Yadav was in command of the SP, the image of the party had become a supporter of the Muslim-Yadav alliance. But now Mulayam is out of active politics. The command is completely in the hands of his son Akhilesh Yadav, who has put full emphasis on breaking the old image of the party. For this, he made an alliance with Jat leader Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal. Broke OBC leaders like Swami Prasad Maurya and brought them to his party by breaking them from the BJP. Along with this, many lucrative announcements were also made continuously for OBC.

The result of all this? As Fatehabad SP supporter Bhavsinh Gurjar said, “Our strategy is working. The number of our supporters is continuously increasing. Now Jats are with us, Mauryas and some other OBC castes too. Some of them had gone with the BJP in 2017 and 2019. Now she seems to be returning back to the SP.’ Another party supporter Laxman Mahour says, ‘OBCs, do Dalits also want a return to the SP-RLD government. This will be proved by the election results.

At the same time, BJP is looking forward to Hindutva and construction of Ram temple. This is clear from the way Amit Shah, the former national president of the party and the country’s Home Minister, started his ‘Ghar-Ghar, Door-Door’ election campaign from Kairana. Here he specially met families who had left their homes after the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013. Then after the formation of the Yogi Adityanath government of BJP, he has returned home. Amit Shah is also specifically mentioning this and other similar things in his tours.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has clearly said many times that the election is of 80:20. Here they are sheltered from 80 percent of the population of the Hindu community. Then, the work of construction of Ram temple is also going on in Ayodhya at a fast pace. BJP is also trying to capitalize on this in its favor.

Perhaps that is why, says Agra’s SP supporter Mahesh Chandra Yadav, ‘Equations are being made, but the SP-RLD government will be formed, it seems difficult now. No one can match the BJP’s support base in the cities. The OBCs are also not yet openly telling with whom they will go. At the same time, the BJP’s own vote-bank will not go away from it. From this, it seems that the SP-RLD are giving a tough competition to the BJP in the elections.

Dinesh Kumar, a social worker from Kasganj, adds one more thing to this, ‘No one has the power to break the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Be it OBC, SC-ST or other. Be a supporter of any party, but when it comes Modi’s turn, he goes with them. As soon as Modi comes out for election campaign, everyone’s math-equations will be stuck.

The situation, since it is not yet clear. Therefore, the data of the last assembly elections can also be taken a look. The BJP had contested in 2017 on 384 seats in the state. Supporting leaders of backward classes – Omprakash Rajbhar, Swami Prasad Maurya, Anupriya Patel etc. were all with the BJP at that time. BJP won 312 seats. He got total 39.7% votes including OBCK bumper support. Whereas SP had fielded candidates on 311 seats. Out of these, she could win only 47 seats. He got a total of 21.82% votes. Now with these figures it can also be kept in mind that both Rajbhar and Maurya have left the BJP and joined hands with the SP.