People's Democracy

UTTAR PRADESH

What Assembly Election Results Signify

S P Kashyap

IF all eyes were set on the Uttar Pradesh (UP) assembly polls during February-March 2012, it was quite natural as its results were sure to impact not only the UP politics but the national politics as well, since they had the potential to change the clout of various political parties in the national politics as well as their number of seats in Rajya Sabha.

WINNING SEATS:

PARTIES’ PRIORITY

With the declaration of their candidate lists by various political parties, it became amply clear that the main concern of the main parties, i.e. the Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was to somehow corner maximum possible number of seats and hence they did not hesitate to field such persons as had had a criminal image. How strong was this opportunism, is clear from the fact that 35 to 40 per cent of these parties’ candidates were tainted people and there were serious cases going on against five to ten per cent of them. If ever a political party expelled any such person in order to mend its image, other parties came forward to own him in view of his mass base. The best test case is that of Baburam Kushwaha who the BJP used to aggressively criticise, but the same party came forward to welcome the same Kushwaha with open hands when the BSP expelled him. If the BJP at all retraced its step, it was only because of the pressure of mass opinion and because of the internal feuds within the party. Soon afterward, the nomination filing process made it also clear that the Indian democracy is now gradually turning into a moneyocracy. Being rich has become a conditio sine qua non for a person to get any party’s ticket. The details necessary to be filed along with nomination papers tell us that more than half of the candidates belonged to the category of the highly prosperous.

Various political parties threw all their resources into the fray in order to win the poll war in UP. Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi took out several yatras and addressed mass meetings all over the state in order to create an atmosphere in his party’s favour. All members of the Gandhi-Nehru family tried their best to safeguard Raibareli, their stronghold. Union minister Salman Khursheed announced a “package” for the religious minorities in order to allure them. He said the union government would raise the minority reservation quota from 4.5 to 9 per cent in case the minorities made the Congress win in the state. This announcement of a 4.5 per cent extra reservation was definitely a kind of bribery, and the Election Commission (EC) took the minister to task for it. However, not only the Congress ministers but Rahul Gandhi too violated the model code of conduct in order to win at any cost, and cases were registered against them for these violations.

To the youth icon of the Congress party, the SP responded by bringing forward Akhilesh Yadav, a member of parliament and the party’s state president, who for his party conducted a vigorous poll campaign in the state. On his part, SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav took hold of the campaign to win the minorities over in UP. The party had in fact initiated the process much earlier. For this purpose, it brought an alienated Azam Khan back to its fold, tendered an apology to the Muslims for its mistakes, included in its election manifesto many poll promises for the minorities, met religious leader in a bid to enlist their support, and announced an 18 per cent reservation for the minorities in case of its victory in response to Salman Khursheed’s nine per cent. The results say Mulayam Singh Yadav did succeed in his mission.

In order to win the UP polls, the BJP again played its Hindutva card. It not only inducted Ms Uma Bharti back into its fold; it also put her in charge of its poll campaign in the state. Grapevine also had it that Ms Bharti was to be made the chief minister if the BJP got a majority in the state. Besides thus playing the Hindutva card with its Uma face, the BJP also tried to win back the backward castes and particularly the Lodh Rajputs. As Ms Bharti is a Lodh, it was presumed that she would loosen Kalyan Singh’s hold upon the community. Crying itself hoarse on the issue of reservations, the party tried its best to forge communal polarisation in the state. It did succeed in this game at a few places.

The ruling BSP appealed to the electorate in the name of its government’s achievements over the preceding five years. A positive point in favour of the BSP and Ms Mayawati, its supremo, before the polling was that her party alone could boast of having a solid vote bank. The question was: would the party be able to repeat its 2007 performance by playing upon its achievements, by showing the tainted ministers and MLAs the door, and by taking recourse to its so-called “social engineering” that had supposedly paid its well in 2007. The biggest impediment to the BSP’s victory now was the mass-scale anger that its failure to address the people’s problems during the preceding five years had generated.

ELECTION

RESULTS

Before the polling to the 403-member UP assembly took place, political commentators, surveyors and politicians were near unanimous that no single party would get a clear majority this time. Despite the Congress party’s and the BJP’s tall claims, the main fight was supposed to be between the BSP and the SP. But as the campaigning process surged ahead, the SP was seen to be increasingly gaining a lead over the BSP and it was now thought that the SP would now be the single largest party in the assembly. However, even the SP leaders might not have imagined of getting an absolute majority.

The results belied all claims; to that extent the UP poll results were a bolt from the blue. Not only the SP got an absolute majority; its tally of 224 assembly seats even surpassed the BSP’s 207 last time. It was a big setback to the BSP. Not only it failed to give a tough competition to the SP; its own tally badly came down to a double-digit number (80). This meant a heavy loss of 127 seats. It was a coincidence that the SP gained an equal number of seats --- 224 in place of 97 last time, i.e., a gain of 127 seats.

The Congress was hoping a big gain this time, mainly for two reasons. First, it had scored an unexpected success in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls in UP. By raising its vote share to 18 per cent as against 12 per cent in the UP assembly polls in 2007, the Congress had bagged 22 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2009. It had then a lead in some 95 assembly segments in these polls. It was therefore being thought that it would get this many seats at least. The expectation was further boosted by the crowds Rahul Gandhi’s programmes and campaigns attracted in UP and by the space the media allotted them. Viewed thus, the results of the UP assembly polls 2012 were no less than a hailstorm for the Congress party’s hopes. Though the party improved its seat tally a bit, from 22 to 28 seats, its vote share declined to even below the 12 per cent it had got in 2007. But the main thing worrying the Congress regarding its future is that the poll results indicate a dwindling of the “magical influence” of Gandhi-Nehru family upon the people. Not to talk of other places, the party bit dust in its own stronghold where it could capture only two out of 10 assembly seats.

Nor were the results any cause of joy for the BJP. Both its vote share and its seat tally declined. It received about 15 per cent of the valid votes polled and suffered a loss of five or six seats, coming down to 47.

It seems, at the first glance, as though there was a wave in favour of the SP from one corner of UP to the other. But it was not really so. The SP got only 3.5 per cent more votes in comparison to 2007, going up to 29.5 per cent. This means that around 70 per cent of the voters had not forgotten their bitter experience of SP rule in the past. The big ups and downs that we see in the seats are in fact a consequence of our defective electoral system where we often see no correspondence between a party’s vote share and its seat tally. The BSP had got a clear majority in 2007 with only 30 per cent of the popular votes and now the SP has bagged 224 eats with only 29.5 per cent of the votes. It is clear that the situation would have been quite different if the system of proportional representation had been in place in the country. The following chart gives a comparison of what the major parties have got in UP and what they would have got under the proportional representation (PR) system.

This picture of the UP assembly polls establishes the justification of and strengthens the long-standing demand of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for introduction of the proportional representation system and other electoral reforms in the country. Till the time it is not done, one or another political minority would establish itself as the majority and thus distort the people’s mandate in the country as well as in various states constituting the Indian Union.

POSITIVE

FEATURES

The UP poll results 2012 present some happy indications as well. The first thing is that the voters seem to have overcome their indifference and inertia regarding use of the right to vote. In various constituencies, there was 10 to 15 per cent more polling this time compared to 2007. This awakening among the voters is appreciable.

Second, the politics of family hold has suffered a setback, even if a slight one. In these elections, sons, daughters and relatives of a number of politicians got tickets because of family influence, but the people rejected them.

Third, as said, all the major parties had put up a number of mafioso and tainted candidates but most of them had had to bite dust. Thus the voters seem to have made it clear that no one can get their votes through terror and muscle power. No earlier election in the state was as peaceful and violence free as the 2012 assembly polls were. The credit goes to the people of UP, and also to the EC. People come out in larger numbers in a peaceful atmosphere to exercise their franchise, which was what happened in UP recently.  

PERFORMANCE OF

THE LEFT PARTIES

The CPI(M) and other Left parties have always been a weak force in UP politics; another fact is that the Left parties other than the CPI and the CPI(M) have only nominal existence in the state. Prior to the polls, the Left parties had held a joint meeting and decided that they would not fight against one another, and would support one another to the extent possible. The CPI contested 51 seats this time and the CPI(M) 17. The RSP, Forward Bloc, CPI(ML), CPI(ML) (Jan Sangharsh Morcha) and Krantikari Samta Party had also put up their candidates.

The results have been disappointing for the CPI(M). It got a respectable 36,982 votes in Koraon only, where it came second. What to talk of getting 10,000 or more votes in the other 17 seats it contested, the party crossed the 5,000 mark only in Mehnagar seat of Azamgarh district. The worrying thing for the party is that its performance was dismal in the districts like Kanpur, Varanasi and Bulandshehar where the party has done some mass work and has some organisation. The following table shows the party’s performance in the 17 constituencies that it contested.

The table makes it clear that the CPI(M) has failed to forge a lively and vibrant relationship with the people of Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state population-wise of the Indian Union, and bring them closer to itself. This is no new weakness, however; the party’s performance over the last several elections tells the same story. Now the 2012 results show that the party’s mass work in the state has failed to achieve its objectives. The state leadership will have to seriously ponder why it so happened and chalk out a plan of work in order to overcome this situation.

The CPI, which contested 51 seats, fared no better either, getting more than 5,000 votes in none of the seats. Its total score in the 51 constituencies was about 90,000 votes. The record of other Left parties deserves no mention.

For the Left, and for the two communist parties in particular, the results bring the clear message that they will have to intensify their independent activities in order to carve a political niche in the state. Steps to make the Left unity stronger and more influential are also called for, urgently.

SIGNIFICANCE OF

THE POLL RESULTS

The UP election results have totally upset the Congress party’s political calculations. The state leadership, and maybe also the national leadership, of the party was up in the airs before the poll results came. They were under the impression that the magical name of Gandhi-Nehru family would put them in the throne in the state or at least, in the case of a hung assembly, their party would be in a decisive position. The hope was that if no single party got a majority, president’s rule would be imposed in the state, which means the Congress party would be ruling UP by proxy. They were so much enamoured of this idea that union minister Shriprakash Jaiswal, one of the party’s stalwart in the state, openly said that UP would have either a Congress rule or the president’s rule. This would also have given the Congress a golden chance to enhance its prestige in the state, improve its position in Rajya Sabha and put up a still better show in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014. In case the SP would have felt constrained to seek the Congress support in order to form a government in the state, it would also have felt constrained to extend support to the Manmohan Singh government at the centre and the latter would have been freed from its compulsion of dancing to Ms Mamata Banerjee’s tune. But what happened was not what the Congress had thought. Getting an absolute and comfortable majority, the SP did not need the Congress clutches and is also set to improve its own position in Rajya Sabha. With its electoral success, the SP is in a position to keep its head high in case it has to bargain with the Congress, if at all.

These polls have brought a big lesson for the BSP. Ms Mayawati is right to say that her people did support her; otherwise she won’t have got the 26 per cent votes she got. But the results clearly say that to come to power and to retain it on the strength of this limited vote bank is impossible. This requires support from other sections of the people too, and that support would come only if something is done for the people. The BSP failed to do it and faced a defeat. Yet it is still a force in UP politics and cannot be written off. Its own base and the vagaries of the existing electoral system may again enable it to come back next or some other time.    

Following the polls, the SP has formed a government in UP, led by Akhilesh Yadav. But it won’t have a smooth sailing. The people rejected the SP in 2007 on the charge that it had established a “goonda raj” in the state. Will the SP be able to get rid of this label? The unsavoury acts done by SP activists at several places following the polls and the way Raja Bhaiya was made a cabinet minister have indeed made people wary, and it is likely that story of 2007 may be repeated in 2017 if the SP fails to get rid of its old image.

Further, in its election manifesto, the party has made many tall promises for various sections of the people and, given the serious economic condition of the state government, it won’t be easy for its government to fulfil all those promises. If so, the people may well feel cheated and get alienated from the party once again. The main section to be watched would be that of the youth who had actively worked and voted for the SP because of its “either employment or unemployment allowance” slogan. This was what brought, amid police repression, a number of unemployed youth to the Employment Exchanges for registration. Hence the situation may become alarming if these youth do not get either a job or allowance. However, it would be premature to guess as to what turn the situation will take.