UP to go on the polls on 3rd march for its 6th phase consists of Purvanchal region or Eastern UP. In this region, a big focus will be on the Bahujan Samaj Party.
If the BSP holds a strong competition in this region, it can ensure a strong fight in this election, which has seen a bipolar one between the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP). A triangle fight means a split of anti-BJP votes.
For this political calculation, the Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently had endorsed the BSP. In an interview, Shah said that the BSP had not lost its relevance, and it continues to have a firm hold in UP politics.
He further said that not only the Dalit votes will be bagged to the BSP, but the Muslims will also vote for Mayawati’s BSP.
Acknowledging Shah’s comment, the BSP chief Mayawati said that along with the Dalits and Muslims, people from the most backward classes and other classes of the society are supporting her party.
It is the region where the BSP, despite receiving consecutive setbacks in the last two assembly elections, the party’s social engineer still continues to hold the ground. In the 2017 assembly election of UP, out of the 19 seats that the party bagged, 5 were from this region.
The result shows that the BSP is still a force in this region. In 2012, 80 seats the party bagged 9 were from this region. The BSP were the runner-up in the 2017 election even with its down graph of victories.
In the 6th phase, the election will be conducted with 57 assembly seats across 10 districts of Balarampur, Siddharthnagar, Maharajganj, Basti, Kushinagar, Sant Kabir Nagar, Ambedkar Nagar, Deoria, Bhalla and Gorakhpur.
The ruling CM of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath, will also contest in this phase. He will be contesting from Gorakhpur Urban. From 1998 to till the year 2017, he became the Chief Minister; he has been the Member of Parliament from this (Gorakhpur) seat.
Out of the 9 assembly seats, 8 were owned by the BJP and one, Chillupur, by the BSP. The famous Gorakhnath, of which Yogi is the head priest, also plays a significant role in bagging votes in this election. Yogi’s Hindutva manifestation and argument of good governance also keep BJP at the winning edge.
The BJP is also banking on its double engine governance. The eastern UP that had been marked by poverty and the slow pace of government claims to have seen development under the leadership of Narendra Modi and CM Yogi Adityanath.
From the successful completion of 361-km long Purvanchal expressway to the inauguration of AIIMS and the fertilizer plant in Gorakhpur, BJP has pitched themselves as to its commitment to the growth of eastern UP.
The Samajwadi Party efforts to expand its base beyond the traditional Yadav-OBC combination, it adopts a new strategy of Mandal politics. Votes for the UP-assembly election will be on the 10th of march.
Published By – Vanshu Mehra
Edited By – Kritika Kashyap
