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Uttar Pradesh’s Phulpur Lok Sabha seat has grabbed headlines following reports that Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati may contest the bypoll from this constituency, after having resigned from her Rajya Sabha seat.
Phulpur is the same seat from where BSP founder, Kanshi Ram, lost the 1996 elections. He was defeated by Samajwadi Party candidate, Jung Bahadur Patel, by 16,000 votes.
Speculation that Mayawati is all set to contest from Phulpur has gained steam as Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, the MP from this constituency, will now have to resign and gain membership of the Lok Sabha or Vidhan Sabha.
The Phulpur seat has a rich history. The nation’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, contested from this seat, as have a number of other political heavyweights. It is significant for both, the BSP and the BJP.
Mayawati’s BSP won Phulpur in 2009 when the party’s Kapil Muni Karwariya bagged 30 percent of the votes.
For the BJP, the vote share in Phulpur grew from 8 percent in 2009 to 52 percent in 2014. Much of the party’s success in the seat can be attributed to Keshav Prasad Maurya, who was the BJP state chief before he was appointed Deputy Chief Minister of UP.
After the 2014 poll debacle, the 2017 UP election results came as a breath of fresh air for the Opposition parties. There are five Assembly constituencies under the Phulpur Lok Sabha seat. According to the 2017 election results, the Congress, BSP and SP have managed to collectively win a vote share of 1.5 lakh more than that of the BJP.
This means that had the three parties joined forces, the Congress-BSP-SP combine would have defeated the BJP in four of the five Assembly seats.
The Phulpur bypoll will play a crucial role not just in Uttar Pradesh but also in the 2019 general elections.
The bypoll could see the birth of a newly united Opposition, or lay the foundation for the creation of Opposition 2.0 – in light of the crumbling of the Mahagathbandan (Grand Alliance) in Bihar.
The SP and the BSP have been bitter rivals since 1995, when the Dalit leader was allegedly attacked by Mulayam Singh Yadav’s workers. If the two parties put their differences aside and come together, it would mean a new dawn for social engineering in the state.
After being decimated by the BJP in the 2017 UP Assembly elections, both Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati had indicated at a truce. A Congress-backed Mayawati-Akhilesh combine in UP, paired with support from Lalu Prasad in Bihar, could make for an Opposition force to be reckoned with.
Besides its potential to unite the Opposition parties, the Phulpur bypoll could also prove to be the perfect opportunity for Mayawati to assert her standing – at a time when PM Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah have been working to break into the Dalit vote bank.
The elevation of Dalit leader Ram Nath Kovind as President has been seen as the BJP’s attempt to appeal to the community. While resigning from her post, Mayawati, had accused the ruling party of gagging her from protesting atrocities on the Dalit community.
(This article was first published in QuintHindi. It has been translated from Hindi by Akriti Paracer and Rupinder Kaur.)
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Published: 02 Aug 2017,11:39 AM IST