By Dhiraj Upadhyay
Lucknow: The battle lines are drawn between various political parties ahead of the 2022 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. The major opposition parties of the state, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party ( SP) is busy pleasing the upper caste voters through ‘Prabudh Sammelans’. At the same the incumbent Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) is focussing to please the Other Backward Caste (OBC) and M-OBC (Extremely Backward Castes) voters, to garner the above 50% vote share by organising ‘OBC conventions’ in all the 75 districts of the state.
BJP wants to capitalise on the OBC vote bank it has acquired from 2014 General Elections in UP. The party poll strategist has gone ahead and planned the state-wide OBC conclaves to keep the first mover advantage in wooing the OBC voters which nearly accounts for more than 50% vote share in the state. The saffron party will start the conferences in the auspicious days of Navratri after Pitru Paksha (Shradh). In these OBC conventions, the ministers of the backward classes of the central and state government will participate.
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There is no dearth of OBC representatives in Yogi Cabinet, at present, there are 29 OBC ministers out of total 60 cabinet ministers, who have been entrusted with the responsibility of attracting the voters of their caste. Meanwhile the whole exercise of conference will be completed under the leadership of UP Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya and Swatantra Dev Singh.
These ministers have been given the responsibility to make this conference a success. Along with this, ministers coming from backward caste of the central government will also participate in these conferences. In the OBC convention of the BJP, the leaders of its backward classes will communicate the benefits of schemes and works done by the Central and UP government for this society. The ultimate aim of BJP is to garner more than 50% votes in the upcoming 2022 assembly elections by wooing these castes.
Non-Yadav OBC’s holds the key for BJP
BJP’s focus will be on those castes of OBC category, whose numbers is less but they are in a decisive position in few areas of the state. While in case of Non-OBC, it is said that from the year 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the castes like Kurmi, Koiri, Rajbhar, Prajapati, Lohar, Nishad etc., had allied with the BJP.
Since then BJP has steadily maintained nearly 40% vote share in UP elections. BJP is successful in retaining good portion of non-jatav (8%) votes in Dalit community along with its core upper caste voters while jatavs (12%) votes share is still intact with BSP and same is the case with Yadav’s (10%) inclined towards SP in UP.
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Prominent OBC caste vote share in UP– ( Kurmi 5%, Rajbhar 4%, Kushwaha 4.6%, Prajapati 4, PAL 3.7, Nishad 4% ( adding other castes of Majhwara, then the vote percentage of Nishad community will reach around 10%), Vishwakarma (Blacksmith) 3.3%, Chauhan 2.2%, Bind 2%, Arkavanshi 2%.
These castes were instrumental in bringing BJ’s majority government in UP in 2017.
Meanwhile BJP has been able to stitch alliance with few of the OBC parties in the state like Dr. Sanjay Nishad, who is trying to unite the Majhwara (Nishad) community (living on the banks of Ganga and Saryu river in UP). The Apna Dal (S), the party of Union Minister of State Anupriya Patel, who does politics of Kurmi votes, is also with the BJP.
BJP will leave no stone unturned to woo the OBC community and the message from the party is loud and clear; after they have inducted significant amount of ministers from these caste both in Centre and state.
