NEW DELHI – If Uttar Pradesh were a country, it would be one of the world’smost populous. And this poverty-stricken northern melting pot of over 200million people is the biggest prize in India’s election ending on Sunday.
Uttar Pradesh (UP) has 80 parliamentary seats, the most of any state, andat the 2014 election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalistBharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept up 71 of them.
This helped give BJP a three-decade record of 282 seats in the 545-seatparliament to oust India’s grand old Congress party, which sunk to a recordlow of 44, just two of them in UP.
“To be in Delhi, you need to perform very well in UP,” Ashok Upadhyay,political scientist at Banaras Hindu University, told AFP.
Many analysts credit the BJP’s previous electoral success to a fragmentedopposition and a massive shift of disparate caste groups towards Modi overan array of issues, including emotive religious appeals.
UP, which has given India nine prime ministers, lies at the centre of thecountry’s vast northern Hindi-speaking belt, home to around a third ofIndia’s 1.3-billion population and which in 2014 formed the core of theBJP’s support.
– Dalit voting power –
But the landlocked region, home to the Taj Mahal and roughly the size ofBritain, is also a cauldron of religions and castes and in this election anunlikely anti-Modi alliance has been formed.
One part of it is the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), headed by Mayawati, theformidable “Dalit Queen” whose championing of India’s lower castes helpedher become UP chief minister four times.
She has partnered with her former sworn foes the Samajwadi Party (SP), ledby another former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, and the smaller RashtriyaLok Dal party (RLD). Absent from the tie-up though is Congress.
“Our aim is to oust the BJP and for the entire opposition to be united,”Vandana Singh, spokeswoman for Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, told AFP.
The state’s chief minister is currently the BJP’s hardline Yogi Adityanath,a shaven-headed, saffron-robed Hindu monk whose uncompromising rhetoric hasalienated many voters.
The BJP insists it is confident but experts say the ruling party knows itis going to lose support in UP.
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As a result the party is aiming to make up for losses by picking up seatsin north-eastern and eastern India, most notably in West Bengal where itfaces another tough challenger in the hard-left Mamata Banerjee.
“Getting a majority (in parliament) means a comprehensive electoralperformance across the country,” Nalin Kohli, a BJP spokesman, told AFP.
– Vital Varanasi –
But personal honour is also at stake in UP for both Modi and Rahul Gandhi,the head of Congress hoping to become the fourth member of India’svenerable Gandhi-Nehru dynasty to become prime minister.
The UP city of Varanasi, where Hindus are cremated on the banks of the holyGanges 24 hours a day, is where Modi is standing, and the 68-year-old’spopularity there is unparalleled.
He won the seat with a huge majority in 2014, telling voters that he wasn’tan outsider — he hails not from UP but from Gujarat — but Varanasi’s “sonof the soil”.
Locals praise him for his efforts to develop the city dotted with templesand thronging with pilgrims and tourists in a state that is a byword forchronic underdevelopment.
But he may have overstepped the mark with his ambitious plan to urbanisethe city, razing centuries-old homes to clear the view to a Hindu temple.
“People of Uttar Pradesh are angry with Modi and I think both Modi and BJPwill pay politically for it,” Santosh Singh, a restaurant owner inVaranasi, told AFP.
“BJP is no longer a people’s party, it’s just about Modi,” he said.
Gandhi, 48, meanwhile is standing in Amethi, a family bastion in the state.But he is also contesting a constituency in the southern state of Kerala,something allowed under Indian election rules — just in case. -APP/AFP
