UP: BJP on course, Amit Shah's caste math working for Modi

Mission 272 for the Bharatiya Janata Party is hinged firmly in the party’s Uttar Pradesh campaign, and going by the data from the latest Lokniti, CSDS-IBN opinion poll, the party may be fairly satisfied with the progress of the campaign in the state that sends 80 MPs to Parliament. [caption id=“attachment_1449239” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] BJP leader Amit Shah. AFP[/caption] In fact, there hasn’t been much change in the vote share projections between the February and March surveys, indicating that the BJP impact in the state has hit a ceiling, its growth maximised barring a last and final thrust leading to another last spurt in support. The projected vote share of the BJP and its allies remains 36 percent as projected in February, up from the 17.5 percent vote share the party won in the 2009 election. The Samajwadi Party’s vote share also remains unchanged from the February projections, at 22 percent. The other parties have not seen a drastic alteration in their support levels as well. The BSP, which won a 27.4 percent vote share in the 2009 election, was projected to win 17 percent of the vote as per the February round of the survey, up marginally to 18 percent in the March survey. The Congress, having aligned with Ajit Singh’s RLD, has seen a marginal rise in its projected vote share — from 13 per cent in the February round to 16 per cent now. The Aam Aadmi Party, conversely, having seen a sharp spurt in its popularity in Uttar Pradesh where it signed up lakhs of members in the immediate aftermath of the Delhi Assembly election win, has seen its popularity dip, going from 5 per cent of the vote share as projected in February to 3 percent in the March survey. Moving leaders from the Mandal to the Kamandal trajectory, Modi’s trusted aide Amit Shah’s number-crunching on the state’s complex caste equations has clearly paid off in UP. As a result, the upper caste vote is decisively with the BJP – the Brahmins who are traditionally with the party and also the Thakurs, the caste card that BJP president Rajnath Singh has played deftly. Singh has filled the party flanks with Thakurs including former bureaucrats and leaders such as former Army chief VK Singh, former home secretary RK Singh and former Congress leader Jagadambika Pal. The BJP is set to witness a good amount of support from the Yadavs too (28 percent of Yadavs among the respondents said they would vote for the BJP), though the Samajwadi Party’s hold over the community remains strong at 58 percent. The only caste group that has shown an inclination to vote for the Congress are the “other SCs” (excluding the Jatavs who are firmly with the BSP at 60 percent of them inclined to vote for Mayawati. And only 21 percent of this “other SCs” group has declared its inclination to vote for the Congress. Modi himself an OBC, the sort of marriage of the Mandal and Kamandal politics that Shah initiated was also seen in the end of February, when the BJP rapidly signed up the support of various caste leaders, Dr Udit Raj (Chairman of the All India Confederation of SC/ST Organisations) and Lok Janshakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan in neighbouring Bihar. The Congress may have hoped that the inclusion of the Jats in the list of OBCs will give the party some brownie points, but this might be offset by the lack of support for the decision among other OBCs. Asked if they support the UPA’s decision on including Jats among OBCs, only 25 percent of non-Jat OBCs supported the move.