UP ELECTIONS

Vidya Subrahmaniam and Smita Gupta on UP Elections

The midnight hour at the Jatav-dominated assembly constituency of Agra chhawni finds an impressive line-up of cheer-leaders frenziedly working up enthusiasm at an election meeting. The subject of the declamation on stage is Mayawati, the current icon of the Jatav community. The speakers are uniformly proud of her brief reign as chief minister, they, in fact, take credit for it. Yet, they also rain the choicest abuse on her. Soon the air resounds with cries of "Jai Bhim".

As the results of the assembly elections show, image confusion has cost the party dear. It is down from 236 seats in the Lok Sabha elections to 176, besides suffering setbacks across the state, in all geographic divisions barring Uttarakhand. Indeed, the BJP's split personality- an upper caste mind and heart trapped in an OBC frame- has never been as much in evidence as in these elections. In a way this is a withdrawal symptom from Ayodhya. Ayodhya not merely raised passions to a fever pitch, it cemented the fractures in Hindu society to the BJP's advantage. The temple frenzy suppressed the backward caste aspirations. Ayodhya was a larger-than-life cause and it allowed only one identity- the Hindu identity.

This cohesion was already cracking in the aftermath of the December 6, 1992 demolition. It now appears to have crumbled. What better proof of this than the BJP's singularly unimpressive performance in the district of Faizabad? And yet, the removal of the Ayodhya critch only partly explains the upper caste backlash from within the party and the leadership's reluctance till the very end to aggressively market Kalyan Singh. Another major reason for the flip-flop is the Congress-BSP alliance. The BJP appears to have been convinced that the Congress's upper caste voters would shift en masse to it, seeing the party as the only stumbling block in the way of Mayawati. But this also required that the BJP double its appeal to the upper castes, which was not possible in a situation where Kalyan Singh was dominating the show.

In the end, the BJP settled for a near equal division of tickets between the forward and backward castes and a somewhat muted projection of Kalyan Singh. But the identity crisis that haunted the party through this period evidently took its toll. While the BJP's opponents - BSP and SP have recovered the ground they lost since they broke up in 1995, the party which was enjoying the fruits of that bitter separation till three months ago, is back where it was in 1993. Worse still is the fact that the BJP is frozen at the 1993 level despite divided opposition, which suggests that it has also taken drop in its vote percentage. That the Congress-BSP tie-up actually worked is now apparent. Similarly, the entry of the Bharatiya Kisan Kamgar Party and the Tiwari Congress into in United Front though of marginal value in terms of seats appears to have imparted to the UF the umbrella        looks so necessary for widening a party's appeal.

A third reason why the complexion of the game changed was Prime Minister Deve Gowda. This election was as much Gowda's as it was Mulayam Singh Yadav's. If the latter fought all odds to raise his individual tally to above 100, the former showed rare pluck in overcoming his many handicaps - unfamiliarity with the local culture, people and language, lack of charisma etc. Braving all this, he resolutely fought his way into the consciousness. of the people. He toured the state like a man possessed, he determinedly wooed Ajit Singh and Mahendra Singh Tikait and, above all, overturned the agenda. Imperceptibly, as it were, the business on hand changed from Mandal and Mandir to something more positive. The concessions he lavished on the state were populist, yet. But they took away the sting from sectarian propaganda.

What now? Uttar Pradesh seems headed for further uncertainty. Not just because it has produced a hung house. Not even because the BSP and the BJP seem game for further political dalliances. In these elections not one party retained even half its existing seats. The churning that this all-round discontent portends can only bring more instability and more elections.

(Source: The Times of India, 13 October, 1996)

UF's Gains in UP Poll's

For the UF, the fact that its seemingly disparate elements have in a space of four months made good its promise to not just halt, but reverse the forward march of the BJP. The UP polls have acted as a confidence- building measure. Barring the Uttarakhand region, where the BJP has won 17 of the 19 seats, the UF has made gains in all other parts of the state. And in Central UP, the Hindutva heartland, the UF has trebled its seats since the Lok Sabha polls.

A victorious BJP in Lucknow would have been a thorn for the UF in Delhi, but these results, regardless of who actually forms the government in UP, have ensured that it is the UF which can, for the moment, continue to read the psychological high ground. For the voters have given in effective reply to the BJP's pre- election rhetoric that the UP polls would be a referendum on the performance of the Centre.

Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda's capacity to lead from the front and blunt the supremacy of caste as the major criteria in the polls will ensure that the UF remains a factor in UP. As for Mulayam Singh the fact that he has not only regained what he won in 1993, but is in a fair way with the further consolidation of the OBC vote in his party's favour to recapturing Charan Singh's old Lok Dal base.

(Source: The Times of India, 13 October, 1996)