Uttar Pradesh elections 2022: How BJP's fortunes changed in the phase-IV seats over the years
India Today
In 2012 assembly elections, the BJP’s performance in the 59 seats now voting in phase-IV of the assembly polls was worse than the party’s average in the state. But two years later, BJP’s vote share jumped to 41 per cent.
The region in the vicinity of Lucknow used to be one of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s weakest links not so long ago. In the 2012 assembly elections, for instance, the BJP’s performance in the 59 seats now voting in phase-IV of the assembly polls was worse than the party’s average in the state. With a vote share of just 13 per cent, the BJP could win only four of these seats.
It was a different story altogether two years later. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP’s vote share jumped to 41 per cent and the party led in 44 assembly segments. There has been no looking back since then, data shows.
The demography of the region used to make it a stronghold of the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party. The two parties accounted for 51 of the 59 seats in the 2012 assembly elections. Fighting as fierce competitors then, the two had cornered close to 60 per cent of the total votes. The vote share of the Congress then was higher than the BJP’s.
According to calculations based on census data, Dalits account for 30 per cent or more votes in 18 assembly constituencies. In as many as 46 out of the 59 seats, the scheduled castes constitute at least a fifth of the voting population. In 17 seats, Muslims account for 20 per cent or more of the total population. The two social groups together account for a majority of votes in 13 seats.
In the Dalit-dominated region, what has worked for the BJP in the last three elections — two Lok Sabha polls and the 2017 assembly polls — is the fact that it has managed to win a sizeable chunk of non-Jatav Dalit votes. The BSP used to receive an overwhelming majority of Jatav votes and a fair share of non-Jatav Dalit votes. That has been changing of late.
According to the CSDS-Lokniti survey data, nearly 31 per cent of non-Jatav Dalits are estimated to have voted for the BJP in the 2017 elections. It was a big jump from just 11 per cent in 2012. Survey results establish that the BJP’s new social engineering of attracting a section of Dalit and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) votes seem to have worked in the region.
Rae Bareli Sadar, Unnao, Lucknow Cantt, Sarojini Nagar, and Lucknow Central are some of the keenly watched seats of phase-IV. Rae Bareli Sadar, a part of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s Lok Sabha constituency, has been a Congress bastion for many elections. In the last assembly elections too, the seat went to the Congress. Aditi Singh, its winner in 2017, has since switched sides and is now contesting as a BJP candidate.
