No sign of ‘pride’ in UP election campaign
“Uttar Pradesh Pride” is missing from the election campaign theme with the key political parties focusing more on castes, corruption and governance this time in the electoral battle they are fighting with the spirit of “now or never”.
In the last Assembly elections, Amitabh Bachchan had played this card for the then Mulayam Singh Yadav government through an advertising campaign.
While Mr Narendra Modi has been playing the “Gujarat Asmita” card almost in every state Assembly election successfully, “Marathi Asmita” has been the Shiv Sena’s trump card in Maharashtra. But in UP, Ms Mayawati, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav or even Mr Kalyan Singh have not identified with the state despite remaining chief ministers for more than two terms.
Interestingly, all the three were heroes of the “Mandal” and “Kamandal” movements that virtually changed the politics of the Hindi heartland. But they could not become UP leaders like Jyoti Basu in West Bengal, Y.B. Chavan in Maharashtra and Biju Patnaik in Orissa.
They remained caste leaders and loved to be remain so. If Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav still relies on the M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) combination to come to power, Ms Mayawati will play the “dalit ki beti” card effectively to retain power. But none of them would like to identify themself with Uttar Pradesh, its historical role and relevance in India.
The Congress can never be comfortable with the SP, BSP even after the polls for the simple reason that it does not want to be seen as a caste party.
It will be interesting to seen whether Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav would like to be projected as “Maulana Mulayam” after allying with Mr Kalyan Singh for some time and Ms Mayawati can get votes of non-dalits on the basis of her government’s performance in the last five years.
The BJP has virtually no card to play in UP this time. It had compromised on the Ayodhya issue after coming to power at the Centre and in the state and the recent developments have diluted its anti corruption card. It cannot criticise chief minister Mayawati after inducting the expelled BSP leaders on the charges of corruption.
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