People's Democracy

THE election scenario in Uttar Pradesh --- biggest state of the Indian Union by population, where the poll results will have a far-reaching effect on the future of the whole country --- is now more or less clear. The state is to go to assembly polls in three phases --- on February 14, 18 and 21.

The UP assembly has 403 seats after the state’s bifurcation, and there are 5,553 candidates in the fray. Not only the recognised national parties and recognised state parties, but a number of other smaller parties too are participating in these polls. The total of all these parties comes to as many as 89.

Some alarming facts are also there. Apart from this extraordinary increase in the number of political parties and candidates, criminals and organised mafia gangs are also trying to influence the outcome of the polls in their own ways. Compared to the last assembly polls that took place in September-October 1996, the number of candidates with criminal records has registered a 60 per cent increase --- from 500 to 800. Such candidates are about 17 per cent of the total number of the candidates in the fray.

A basic threat to democracy is that the parties that promised to free the society and politics from criminals’ influence have themselves put up a large number of criminals as their candidates in order to ensure their victory. Going by the police records, 40 candidates of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), 36 of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and 32 of the Samajwadi Party (SP) have criminal cases pending against them. These are the three major parties in the fray. The Congress --- the fourth biggest party in the state --- has its own share of criminal candidates.

Apart from the criminals who themselves are contesting, many are trying to influence the poll outcome from outside. A large part of Bundelkhand region in the state has been under the terror of Dadua, the self-declared dacoit king, for years. Now that Dadua’s own brother is contesting on a BSP ticket, this dacoit king has issued an ‘edict’ for his ‘subjects’ to push the Elephant button in the electronic voting machine, otherwise be prepared to be shot dead.

This unprecedented criminalisation of politics is an outcome of the immoral politics which the power-hungry BJP resorted to, in a most vulgar manner, to form a government five years ago and to retain it. As is well known, the BJP disrupted the BSP, Congress and some other parties by organising defections, its pliant speaker promptly recognised the defectors as political parties, and the BJP rewarded each and every defector with a ministerial gaddi. The result is that each and every paper organisation, each and every independent or criminal candidate is harbouring high hopes today. In case such a person somehow wins a seat in the polls, his hope is that the hung assembly will give him a ministerial post, an official bungalow and vehicles, bodyguards for his security, and all other benefits that go with the post --- all with the tax-payers’ money. Not only that, in case of his victory, a candidate with a criminal record can also hope to somehow influence the court cases pending against him. And no less tempting is the prospect that he will get salutes from the same police officials who have been after his life till now. It is this thinking that has prompted many criminals to contest elections and adopt all possible heinous tactics to win.

Of the 89 parties contesting the polls, only a handful are to play a major role. Of these parties, only the Congress is contesting all the seats. In the 1996 elections, it had won 32 seats. But when the BJP resorted to its immoral game, a good chunk of the Congress legislators sold their conscience in return for ministerial posts; that was how the so-called the Loktantrik (democratic!) Congress Party (LCP) was born. But the attendance in the "Parivartan Rallies" organised by the Congress party last year and the people’s deep-seated anger against the BJP indicates that, overcoming the effects of the earlier defections, the Congress has gained back its 1996 status at least. Significantly, the revival of the Congress party is not extended over the whole state but confined to some urban areas.

The BSP is contesting 402 seats. The party had earlier contested the 1993 assembly polls in alliance with the SP and the 1996 polls in alliance with the Congress. However, its experience of poll alliances has not been happy. The party’s allegation is that every time its solid voters did vote for its alliance partner, but the latter did not transfer its vote bank to the BSP fully and honestly. Its experience has also made it an expert in the politics of opportunism. The BSP won 67 seats in 1993 with 11.11 per cent votes, and 67 seats in 1996 with 19.59 per cent votes. Now it realises that it cannot go beyond this figure on the strength of merely Dalit and minority votes. That is why it has stopped spitting fire against the upper castes and put up 90 upper caste candidates, apart from 90 Muslims and a good number of Dalits. This is not so much an attempt to impress that the BSP is not a party of the Dalits only, as an attempt to eat into the vote banks of other parties. How far it will succeed is difficult to say. The only thing certain is that the BSP is one of the three main contestants in these polls.

The SP, that won 110 seats last time, is the front-runner this time. Most of the political observers concede that the SP will emerge as the biggest party after the polls. But that it will gain a majority of its own, is being claimed only by the SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and other SP leaders. The SP is this time contesting 390 seats, leaving 6 seats for the CPI(M) and 5 for the CPI that are parts of the Lok Morcha. The SP’s behaviour during this division of seats was totally arbitrary. Yet it got away with it only because of the allied parties’ understanding that to defeat the BJP in UP is absolutely necessary for saving the country from the BJP’s misrule and therefore a division of anti-BJP votes has to be prevented as far as possible. That was why the other Lok Morcha parties accepted this arbitrary division of seats. Moreover, this is the understanding with which the former prime minister V P Singh is campaigning in favour of the Lok Morcha parties even though he does not have a candidate of his own. Thus the SP-led alliance if totally united and will get its advantage.

The BJP has 319 candidates in the fray, leaving 84 seats for its allies. In a bid to convince the electorate that only some legislators were responsible for the party’s sins, it has put up 103 new faces this time. Caste equation was given full consideration while distributing the tickets. Taking the upper castes as its safe vote bank, the BJP has tried to lure the Dalit and backward caste voters by giving 53 per cent of its tickets to the men from these castes. As for the Jats, the BJP has tried to win them over by allying with Ajit Singh.

For the BJP, the 1990s were a decade of expanding mass base. It got 30.26 per cent votes in the 1991 assembly polls and it went up to 36.48 per cent in the 1998 Lok Sabha polls. But then the decline started and the BJP got only 27.64 per cent votes in the 1999 Lok Sabha polls. The number of its MPs from UP came down by half. The voters are realising well that despite its claim of being a party with a difference, the BJP is in fact a far worse party than others. The last five years of BJP rule in the state have been the years of a nightmare for the people.

The BJP’s is a badly rocking boat in these polls and most observers feel that it is sure to get drowned. First of all, the party stands badly divided from top to bottom. The Brahmin-Thakur divide is far from bridged, despite all the show of amicability put up by Rajnath Singh and Kalraj Mishra at press conferences and in public meetings.

Secondly, the cadres too are highly dissatisfied with the ticket distribution; this has come to the fore in form of rebel candidates in a number of seats. This has further demoralised the cadres.

Thirdly, the BJP-led alliance is far from united. The newly formed Shakti Dal of Menaka Gandhi and Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Jan Shakti Party have put up candidates against the BJP in several places even though they are parts of the alliance. Moreover, these parties are targeting the BJP in their propaganda in these seats, showing a lack of the spirit of even friendly contest between them.

Fourthly, even though the BJP has aligned with Ajit Singh in a bid to improve its position in the Jat-dominated areas of western UP, it appears that it will get only partial success here. In fact, Ajit Singh has himself lost a part of his vote bank because of his alliance with the BJP. The minorities have deserted him. Also, he cannot expect that the Jat voters of today would solidly stand by him. In this region, several weighty local Jat leaders are contesting as rebel or independent candidates, thus spoiling the BJP-Ajit game. There is of course no open discontent over ticker distribution here, but silent attempts at sabotage are going on. Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala has put up 97 candidates in this region and, even if he does not win many seats he would definitely eat into the Jat vote bank, to the detriment of the BJP-Ajit Singh alliance.

Finally, former chief minister Kalyan Singh, who was expelled from the BJP, is also posing a threat to the BJP in some seats. His RKD has put up 333 candidates and he has openly declared that his aim is to avenge his humiliation by getting the BJP defeated. The ‘Mission Uma Bharati’ started by BJP leaders to win over the pro-Kalyan Lodh caste voters has proved an utter failure. Kalyan Singh commands 6 to 7 per cent votes in several districts and the BJP is afraid that, desperately trying to avenge his humiliation, he may at the last moment ask his supporters to go in for ‘tactical voting’ against the BJP. This means that he may ask his supporters to vote for whichever candidate is in a position to defeat the BJP.

The BJP’s tragedy is that it has no worthwhile issue today to attract the voters. Its 1996 slogan of freeing the state of bhay, bhook and bhrashtachar (fear, hunger and corruption) has proved utterly empty. The BJP has no courage to repeat this slogan now. Its claim of being a party of political morality was also exposed when it lured the legislators from other parties. Its move to lure the ‘most Dalits’ and ‘most backwards’ by effecting reservations within reservation and promising 40,000 jobs for these categories, has also backfired. The Supreme Court has put its foot down on the move, saying it was against the constitution. Moreover, the public too has realised that it was nothing more than an election stunt.

To top it all, the BJP’s move to polarise the voters on communal line has miserably failed. The recent VHP yatra failed to attract the common masses despite the full support extended to it by the saffron brigade and by the government. For the BJP, the temple is an issue and is not an issue at the same; it is not included in the party’s election manifesto. While its national leaders are avoiding any mention of temple construction, its state and local leaders are using it to deceive the gullible voters. At the same time, top BJP leaders feel constrained to rouse passions on the issue of terrorism and against Pakistan, in a bid to exploit the patriotic sentiments of the people. But this line of propaganda too has failed to cut any ice with the voters.

In the end, the tragi-comedy is that while the chief minister Rajnath Singh has got a rath prepared for him with an expense of several lacks of rupees, he is demanding that the SP give an account for the money it is spending in these elections.

The situation today has demoralised the BJP which is facing the prospect of defeat not only in UP but also in Uttaranchal, Punjab and Manipur. (This is not to talk of the currently BJP-dominated Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) that is to go to the polls in March and where too it is afraid of getting defeated.) This prospect and its probable ramifications for the central government have so much unnerved the prime minister himself that he has stooped down to the level of launching personal attacks against Mrs Sonia Gandhi, Congress president and leader of opposition in Lok Sabha. Rajnath Singh desperately ran to Tirupati to ask for the God’s blessings. Now his only hope is that if only the combined seat tally of the BJP and BSP comes to the magic figure of 202, he may again come to power by repeating the same opportunistic and immoral defection game which the BJP played earlier in 1997.