FEATURE AND NEWS ALLIANCE, NEW DELHI
How Uttar Pradesh slipped out of the Janata Dal requires some probing. Why the Mandal did no miracle in UP like in neighboring Bihar? Much more than that, the defeat of the Mandal architect, Sharad Yadav, has surprised one and all.
The Janata Dal (JD) was certainly expected io perform better than it did with BC’s, Muslims and the Dalits firmly under its sway.
That the BJP lost MP, Rajasthan and HP — three states — because of its misrule will be to oversimplify things as barring Madhya Pradesh, the BJP rule in other two states is generally rated as better than that of the previous regimes there. Evidently the BJP’s + main “mandir card” did not enthuse voters here as one cannot sustain a bogey in the absence of the opponent, Muslims in this case. The voters need the villain before their eyes to pour their ire. Thus the “mandir card” became Counterproductive, it set the anti-thesis in motion.
In UP, the BJP played on the “vandalism of history” to earn Hindu support. The state populace having been. witness to the firing on kar sevaks and mass arrests, gave credence to the BJP campaign. The victory in UP fulfilled the four-decade-old dream of the party and it more than compensated for the “defeats in the neighboring three states. But the question still remains so to what happened to the JD -vote banks.
Thakurs & Jat’s vote BJP: Ironically, the JD had no machinery to convince the people of Mandal benefits. Unlike Bihar where reservations had been in force since 1979, UP had none. In Bihar the reservation. for BC in central services created immediate stir and people encase cast their lot with the JD. By the time Mandal percolated down to mass consciousness, the rath yatra began churning sentiments and the mandir issue swayed the electorate. The only group that was influenced by Mandal were the Yadavs who could not decide as to who was their benefactor, the JD or the Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SJP, and their votes were divided. The Jatav (Dalit) votes of the western UP were also divided between the Congress, JD and the Bahujan Samaj Party, due to local reasons.
The Jat’s of western Uttar Pradesh, a powerful and politically aware caste group, adopted a bizarre attitude. They voted for only Jat candidates of the JD and the BJP. In places where both parties had fielded Jat’s, they preferred the BJP. They were sore with the JD for their exclusion from reservation under Mandal Commission.
Muslims prefer JD: The JD which was hoping to. get almost all the Thakur votes in UP failed to get their support. They too favored the BJP. Only the Muslims by and large voted for the JD. This also led to polarization of Hindu votes on the BJP side. That is why the BJP won from Kanpur, Varanasi, Sambal, – Amrohi having sizeable Muslim population.
The communal tension and rioting at a few places on the poll-eve scared the Muslim women from casting their votes. This must have cost the JD a loss of at least 10% of Muslim votes. It was a crucial loss as JD candidates were defeated by very thin – margins in several constituencies.
How Shared Yadav lost: The wafer-thin victory margins of the BJP candidate are the only consolation for the JD. Sharad Yadav missed the Badhun seat by just over 14,000 votes. Mulayam Singh Yadav had accorded top priority to his defeat and visited the constituency more than half a dozen times. K.C. Tyagi of the JD lost the Ghaziabad seat by 9,000 votes to Prof. Tomar of BJP. Ajay Singh lost in Agra by just 5,000 votes simply because the Jatav’s voted against him following the Jat-Jatav clashes last year.
