Bhim Army chief Chandra Shekhar Azad prepares for a solo battle as Parliamentarian

From a street fighter to a Parliamentarian, Chandra Shekhar Azad has come a long way in a decade-long career and his victory in Nagina has stirred the pot of Dalit politics in the State with around 21% Scheduled Caste population that has been ruled by a Dalit Chief Minister four times

From a street fighter to a Parliamentarian, Chandra Shekhar Azad has come a long way in a decade-long career and his victory in Nagina has stirred the pot of Dalit politics in the State with around 21% Scheduled Caste population that has been ruled by a Dalit Chief Minister four times. However, despite winning the reserved seat by a handsome margin, neither the Indian National Democratic Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) nor the National Democratic Alliance blocs have acknowledged Mr. Azad’s accomplishment.

Unperturbed, Mr. Azad has said he would maintain equal distance from both alliances and continue to raise his voice if there is any injustice done to the underprivileged and deprived sections in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) orin the Opposition-run States. Refusing to be bracketed just as a Dalit face, he expected the media to address him like any other Parliamentarian.

The BJP and its allies had won 15 out of 17 reserved seats in U.P. in 2019. This time the number has come down to eight with Samajwadi Party (SP) securing seven and Congress registering a handsome victory in Barabanki. Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won two seats in 2019 including Nagina. This time its candidate has finished fourth and lost his deposit. In three Assembly segments of Nagina Lok Sabha where the SP won in the 2022 Assembly election, the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshiram) was ahead.

Party sources say that they fought the election against the BJP but were surprised by the cold attitude of the INDIA bloc. “It seems they fear Azad’s popularity among Dalits and backward Muslims,” a party leader said. The same attitude, he said, was shown towards Pappu Yadav (Rajesh Ranjan) in Bihar. 

A section of the SP sees Mr. Azad as a plant of the BJP who was given Y+ security just in March end this year after he could not garner the support of the INDIA alliance. “He is the Dalit equivalent of [Asaduddin] Owaisi. The BJP doesn’t take action against them and a section of media presents them as the sole representatives of their respective communities to polarise the society because both make provocative statements that make headlines,” a SP leader said.

But unlike Mr. Owaisi who is based in Hyderabad, it is hard to cast aspersions on Mr. Azad because Bhim Army, the social base of ASP (K), with its countrywide membership of one crore, is present in most U.P. villages and Mission 78, its ideological arm, has teachers and retired government officials many of whom have the training of BAMCEF (The All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation) that enriched Bahujan Samaj Party over the years.

Kanishka Singh, a senior leader of ASP (K), said that had Mr. Azad been a BJP stooge, Muslims would not have voted for him in such large numbers. The Nagina constituency has around 43% Muslim population. “The SP didn’t want Mr. Azad to develop a base among backward Muslims. But the community knows that he took to the streets during anti-NRC protests while Akhilesh Yadav didn’t come out,” he said.