Two former chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh — Digvijay Singh and Uma Bharti — have emerged as prominent campaigners in the key electoral battle being fought in Uttar Pradesh.
While Mr Singh has been trying to bring minorities back to the Congress and thus check the Samajwadi Party and BSP, Ms Uma Bharti is the BJP’s OBC face as the saffron party is banking on the non-Yadav backward castes in the absence of the Hindutva card in this fight for space.
Another three former chief ministers — N.D. Tiwari, Kalyan Singh and Lalu Prasad Yadav — have become irrelevant in Uttar Pradesh.
Mr Singh’s strategy seems to be that the minorities should not vote en block to either the SP led by Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav or the BSP led by chief minister Mayawati.
These two parties got the Muslim votes against the backdrop of the Ayodhya agitation. The division in the Muslim votes helped the Congress in the 2009 General Election. Mr Singh is the Congress general secretary and the AICC’s incharge for UP.
It will be interesting to see if Mr Singh can make a dent in the BJP’s Thakur vote back.
He is seen as the top Thakur leader in the country after the late Prime Ministers Chandrashekhar and V.P. Singh and the late vice-president Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.
The BJP has not been able to emerge as an alternate to either the ruling BSP or the SP in UP despite being in power in the neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. It has played the Uma card in a desperate attempt to get political space among the non-Yadav OBCs.
Significantly, the Congress, Hindutva hardliners and the Mandalites are not depending on Mr N.D. Tiwari, Mr Kalyan Singh and Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav in this key election.
Mr Tiwari might have campaigned for some Congress candidates in Uttarakhand but is not in demand in UP, the state he had ruled as the CM.