Delhi polls: Why Purvanchali votes are crucial for the BJP

New Delhi: As Delhi warms up for the assembly polls, political parties have shifted focus to the numerically strong Purvanchali voters. Accounting for nearly 40 lakh of the city’s 1.5 crore population, this group, comprising people from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, can tilt the electoral balance in 20-25 seats.

The BJP, which had fielded five candidates from the region last year, is planning to increase the number and launch an aggressive campaign in the constituencies with higher concentration of Purvanchalis. Once considered a loyal vote bank of the Congress, the latter had favoured the Aam Aadmi Party in the assembly election of November 2013. The BJP is making efforts to snatch these voters this time from AAP.

The Lieutenant Governor declared Chhath festival - a major festival of the Purvanchali region – a public holiday on 28 October after Delhi BJP president Satish Upadhyay met the chief secretary. Earlier, it used to be a restricted holiday.

“Delhi is the second state after Bihar to declare a public holiday on Chhath. It is not just a holiday but a matter of pride for the people of Purvanchal. Its credit directly goes to the BJP because the decision was made on our demand and we are sure that it will give us political advantage,” Dinesh Pratap Singh, chief of Delhi BJP’s Purvanchal Morcha, told Firstpost.

The move to get Chhath declared as public holiday appears to be a carefully calculated after former Delhi BJP chief and Rajya Sabha member Vijay Goel ruffled feathers by calling for a halt to migration of people from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to Delhi.

“Every day, more migrants come to Delhi. Most of them are from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. They come here because they do not have employment opportunities in their states. These migrants settle in slums, which later become unauthorised colonies. If we have to solve the problems of Delhi, we need to stop their inflow,” Goel had said. His controversial statement had attracted sharp criticism for the BJP unit in Bihar, where the party won 31 out of the total 40 Lok Sabha seats in the general elections.

This, BJP sources would say, is only one of the moves to reach out to these voters. Replying to a query on the other issues with which they will reach out to voters, Singh said, “We are assuring them that their other important issues like shelters, police victimisation, health and education will be addressed on priority basis if our government comes to power here. We have our government at the Centre which will help us expedite the work for them.”

Taking lessons from the last year’s “mistake of ignoring the Purvanchali electorate”, the saffron party has formed a dedicated wing of the Delhi BJP called Purvanchal Morcha, which has been assigned the responsibility of wooing the voters of this community.

“We have formed a Purvanchal Morcha. It is a wing of our party and its president, vice president and general secretary can take part in all meeting of the party’s office bearers. Earlier, we had Purvanchal Prakosht (Purvanchal Cell) but its members were not entitled to take part in all meetings. Induction of more and more people from the region will help party win their confidence. It will ensure strong representation of the section in the party. Since all the members of this wing are Purvanchalis, they will be able to convince the voters in better way,” Poonam Azad, vice president of the saffron party’s wing, told Firstpost.

While the BJP is trying to emerge as the beneficiary of the declaration of public holiday on Chhath, the Congress has accused the Central government of being “irresponsible to the people of Purvanchal” because most of them could not go back to their native places due to “ineffective handling of railways that resulted in rush and chaos on railway platforms during the festival”.