In the recent UP bypolls, while wresting the Rampur Assembly seat, a known bastion of Azam Khan, from the Samajwadi Party (SP) amid low Muslim voters’ turnout, the ruling BJP lost its Khatauli Assembly seat to the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) while faring poorly in the SP stronghold of Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency. In the outcome in Khatauli and Mainpuri bypolls, what seems to have especially come as a worry for the BJP was the perceived apathy of the non-Yadav OBC voters for the party in the two constituencies.
All the three parties had fielded OBC candidates in the two seats. The BJP’s candidate was defeated by the SP’s Dimple Yadav in Mainpuri, while its nominee lost Khatauli to the RLD’s non-Yadav OBC candidate backed by the SP.
BJP sources said the party may have got only up to 50 per cent votes of upper castes, including Brahmins and Thakurs, in Mainpuri, with their remaining voters supporting Dimple, wife of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, as a tribute to SP founder and Akhilesh’s father Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose demise necessitated the bypoll.
The saffron party was hopeful of garnering the upper caste votes, expecting an anti-Yadav polarisation in Mainpuri. “But Akhilesh and Dimple showed respect to Brahmins in rituals after Mulayam Singh Yadav’s death. Both touched the feet of Brahmins and gave them due regard as per rituals. That made a large section of Brahmins to vote for SP as a tribute to Mulayam,” said a BJP leader.
The Yadav community accounts for an estimated 4.5 lakh voters of Mainpuri’s total 17 lakh electors. Shakyas (OBC) account for 3.5 lakh voters, Dalit voters are 2-2.5 lakh, Lodh Rajput (OBC) are 1.25 lakh and Muslim voters are over 70,000 in the constituency.
The BJP fielded Raghuraj Singh Shakya from Mainpuri. In the 2019 general elections, the BJP’s Prem Singh Shakya had lost to Mulayam by 94,389 votes. Prem had then got 4.30 lakh votes, even taking the lead over Mulayam in the Bhongaon Assembly segment by 25,510 votes.
But in the bypoll, when about 9.64 lakh votes were polled as against the 2019 election’s 9.76 lakh votes, Raghuraj’s total 3.29 lakh votes amounted to even less than the Shakya community’s votes. He lost to Dimple by over 2.88 lakh votes. The BJP has attributed its huge defeat to the “sympathy wave after Mulayam’s demise”.
In Bhongaon too, Dimple took the lead despite the segment being inhabited predominantly by the Lodh community (OBC), which backed the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP had won Bhongaon and Thakur-dominated Mainpuri in the 2022 Assembly polls too.
“A preliminary analysis suggested that BJP got only 50 per cent of Shakya votes. We got around 80 per cent Lodh votes but did not get support of another OBC caste Pals that number around one lakh in the Mainpuri parliamentary seat,” said a BJP leader.
UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath addressed two rallies in Mainpuri and his cabinet colleague Jaiveer Singh, a Thakur leader, represents the Mainpuri Assembly segment, but the party still got only around 30 per cent of the constituency’s two lakh Thakur votes, said the leader.
To reach out to Dalit voters, the BJP deployed Etawah MP Ram Shankar Katheria, social welfare, SCs and tribal welfare minister Asim Arun and Union minister SP Singh Baghel in its campaign, but party insiders claim that the SP managed to get the Dalit votes too.
In Khatauli seat in Muzaffarnagar district, the RLD’s Madan Bhaiyya, a Gujjar OBC leader, trounced the BJP’s Rajkumari Saini (OBC) by 22,143 votes. Muslims, who make up the single largest chunk of voters with 80,000 votes in Khatauli, backed the RLD. Dalits account for the second largest number of votes in the seat.
There are 1.5 lakh OBC voters in Khatauli under different sub-castes like Prajapati, Jat, Saini, Kashyap, Gujjar, Pal and others. The Saini community accounts for around 45,000 votes. The BJP did not just fail to get the Dalit votes despite the absence of the BSP in the fray, but it also could not secure the OBC votes substantially in this western UP constituency.
Rajkumari Saini garnered altogether 74,996 votes. However, in the 2022 Assembly polls, when the RLD’s Rajpal Saini had got 84,306 votes, Rajkumari’s husband Vikram Singh Saini had won the election by getting one lakh votes. Vikram’s disqualification led to the bypoll.
“The combination of Jats, Jatavs and Muslims caused BJP’s defeat in Khatauli. In 2022 polls, we had got around 25 per cent of Jat votes but in bypoll they all polled in support of RLD due to an aggressive campaign by RLD president Jayant Chaudhary. BJP could not woo Jats despite the party campaigners’ bid to invoke the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots,” said a BJP leader.
The UP BJP’s president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary and its general secretary (organisation) Dharampal Singh are OBC leaders from western UP.
UP backward class welfare minister Narendra Kashyap, who is also the state BJP’s OBC morcha chief, claimed that non-Yadav OBCs’ support base for the party was “intact”. “But voters’ attitude get changed in bypolls because such an election is not for formation of government. Turnout of their (SP and RLD) voters increased whereas BJP voters got reluctant in casting their votes. In Mainpuri, SP tried polarisation. One caste (Yadav) polled more and also there was sympathy for Neta ji (Mulayam),” said Kashyap, who too had campaigned in Mainpuri and Khatauli for the party’s nominees.
RLD spokesman Rohit Agarwal said, “BJP deployed the entire government in canvassing but RLD under the leadership of Jayant Chaudhary got the support of every caste and community and won.”
