DEFECTIONS AND UP POLITICS

 DEFECTIONS AND UP POLITICS..

The Republic of India is called as the most diversified country in the world because of its blend of different religions and amalgamation of different castes. This quality of diversity makes the politics of world’s largest democracy a lot interesting. In Indian politics everything is driven by two things one is the Religion and the other is the caste. It is very common in India that every political party has its own ‘vote bank’ by attracting some religious communities or some castes which they belong to and almost no party is an exemption to it. Voters of this country are also always wants someone from their religion or community to rule them and their perspective remained the same even after the 75 years of the independence.

Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous country with almost 25crores of population which is larger than the population of many countries. UP is one of the most important state in ‘Hindi Heart land’. UP being the most populous state in the country sends 80 MP’s to the lower house of the parliament which is most by any state in the country. So to any political party to rule the centre, UP remains the key state to hold. UP’s demography of sharing the border with other Hindi speaking states like Haryana, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar makes it an important state politically in India. Due to its history and demography, UP contains different types of religions and castes, Yadavs, Mouryas, Lonia Rajputs, Lodhs are some of the important castes which constitute major proportion of the population in UP. Hinduism and Islam remain as the major religions in the state constituting 79% and 19% of the total state population respectively, Islam being second most important religion of the state with 20% of the total population forms an important vote bank to any party to hold.

UP like any other Indian state is always dominated by the Indian National Congress(INC) until 1990’s. It is in the year 1992 Samajwadi party(SP) has been established and it turned out as the game changer of the UP politics because until 1992 INC dominated the UP state politics by almost winning all the elections with janata party, Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) and some other political parties winning once in a blue moon and formed unstable governments which hardly stayed for a year or two. After the establishment of SP its leader Mulayam Singh Yadav formed an strong vote base of his own community ie., Yadav community and stood firmly against the congress and came into power in 1993. Though his government stayed just for two years its has given hopes to many political parties that the INC’s UP fort can be breached. After the political turmoil in 1995, Mayavati’s Bahujan Samaj Party(BSP) formed the government in UP in 1997 for a period of six months and in the subsequent elections held in  the state BJP formed the government  and became the first non-congress to complete the five years ruling in the state and from then surprisingly the congress party lost its glory and deserted. From 1995 the election war in UP has always been between the three parties namely SP,BSP and BJP. In 2002,2012 SP formed the government and in 2007 BSP had formed the government and in 2017 BJP has formed the government.

UP assembly has a total 403 seats after the bifurcation of uttarkhand. The magic figure required to form the government is 202. 2017 state elections of UP have turned the tables upside down because BJP’s National Democratic Alliance which was restricted to a mere 47 seats in 2012 elections has won a whopping seats of 312 in the 2017 elections along with its alliance Apna Dal(AD) and SP has reduced to mere 47 seats from 224 seats in 2012 and fate of the another competitor BSP became still worst by reducing to a 19 seats from 80 seats in 2012. Due to the impact of BJP in that elections BSP became a weak party and congress is completely deserted by winning just 7 seats.

Defection is one of the most important word in the politics. A politician is said to be defected if one politician resigns to a political party and joins the other party or if he supports the other political party indirectly by voting against the decision taken by the party in which he is a part of. Though the term ‘Defection’ and the expression ‘Aaya Ram Gaya Ram’ which is used to describe a defector are originated in Haryana in 1967, UP also known for its defections. The figures relating to the defections during the 2017 elections shows the trend of defection in UP. In 2017 election BJP has fielded a total of 65 defectors coming from different parties and out of 65 defectors fielded by the BJP 52 defectors won the elections which is a strike rate of 80%, similarly SP, BSP,INC have fielded 29,25,10 defectors respectively which collectively sum up to 64 and out of these 64 defectors only 7 have won the elections that is with a strike rate of over 10%. Though the Rajiv Ghandhi’s government taken a step to curb this defection trend in 1985 by bringing in a ‘Anti defection law’ through 52^nd constitutional amendment act of 1985 and adding it to the tenth schedule of the Indian constitution, the trend continued till today using the loopholes present in the law and the above figures of 2017 UP elections shows how effective and game changing these defections are.

Generally there will be two motives for a defector to defect from one party to the other. They are:

1) If he thinks that the party he is going to wins the elections.

2) If he finds that the party in which he is in will not give him the election ticket.

 

IN 2022 UP is again going for the elections and the first phase of elections are to be started from the february10, 2022. The competition in 2022 politics has reduced to just between two parties namely SP and BJP as INC and BSP have been completely deserted after the 2017 elections. So now the major competition in UP is just between BJP and SP. The equation for SP under the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav is very simple that is to just make sure that all its Yadav vote bank stays with it and to attract some other non-Yadav OBC vote bank by fielding the defectors from other parties who can get them the non-Yadav OBC votes and another important  is factor is to attract as many as Muslim votes possible since BJP gets very less amount of Muslim votes due its reputation of being a pro-Hindu party and Muslim voters  are likely to vote a non-BJP party. Where as the equation for BJP is trust its Hindu vote bank and make sure that atleast 50% of Hindu voters vote to BJP Since the state contains 79% of Hindu population and for doing that BJP has to keep as many as possible non-Yadav OBC vote bank with them since SP will take away the Yadav vote bank. So to get their equation right both the parties will try to do anything possible and they will not shy to field the defectors from the other parties in the elections. So the trend continued this time also and with just less than three weeks remaining for the elections the things started getting heated with announcement of defections from some key leaders of BJP into SP and from some leaders of SP into BJP.some of the key defections are:

1)Swami Prasad Mourya(Defected from BJP to SP): He is from the padrauna constituency and has been minister of labour and urban employment in Yogi Adityanath’s government since 2017. He belongs to the Mourya community which is one of the most important non-Yadav OBC community  in UP. Earlier in 2016 he has been defected from BSP to BJP just before the 2017 elections.

2) Dharam Singh Saini(Defected from BJP to SP): He is from Nakur Constituency and has been the minister of AYUSH in the Yogi Adityanaths government from 2017. He belongs to sainy community. Earlier he defected to BJP from BSP.

3) Mukesh Verma(Defected from BJP to SP): He is from Shikohabad constituency. He belongs to the lodh community which is another important non-Yadav OBC community . Earlier he defected to BJP from BSP.

4) Roshan Lal Verma(Defected from BJP to SP): He is from Tihar Constituency. He belongs to kurmi community. Earlier he defected to BJP from BSP.

5) Bijesh Prajapati(Defected from BJP to SP): He is from Tindwari Constituency. He belongs to prajapati community. Earlier he defected to BJP from BSP.

6)Bhagwati Prasad Sagar(Defected from BJP to SP): He is from Bilhaur Constituency. He belongs to Dalit community. Earlier he defected to BJP from BSP.

7)Dara Singh chauhan(Defected from BJP to SP): He is from Madhuban Constituency and he has been the minister of forest and Environment in the yogi adityanath’s government from 2017. He belongs to Lonia Rajputs. Lonia Rajputs have their roots in the Rajasthan and it is believed that they crossed the luni river and reached the UP after the Aurangazeb’s war with his brother. Earlier he defected to BJP from BSP.

8)Awasti Bala Prasad(Defected from BJP to SP): He belongs to Brahmins community. Earlier he defected to BJP from BSP.

9)Vinay Shakya(Defected from BJP to SP): He is from Bidhuna Constituency. He belongs to Shakya community. Earlier he defected to BJP from BSP.

10)Avatar Singh Bhadana(Defected from BJP to RLD): He is from meerapur Constituency. Earlier he defected to BJP from Congress.

11)Hariom Yadav(Defected from SP to BJP): He is from Sirsaganj Constituency. He belongs to Dalit community.

12)Aparna Yadav(Defected from SP to BJP):She is the daughter-in-law of the SP’s founder Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Along side these two more MLA’s from the BJP’s ally party Apna Dal have been defected to the SP.

So as of now with whatever defections happened till now Samajwad Party will be the happier side because it has got some of the major non-Yadav OBC vote carriers like Swami Prasad Mourya , Dharam Singh Saini, Dara Singh Chauhan. So they are in commanding position as of now where as BJP is also is very much fine with the defectors they got like Hariom yadav and Aparna Yadav as BJP is expecting that they bought some amount of Yadav votes along with them and they still strongly believe that the maximum share of Hindu votes stay with them and they also expecting that once again the modi mantra helps in sweeping the elections. It is too early to predict the winner of the race but definitely the tings are getting heater and lot more defections like this can be expected in next few weeks before the elections.

Generally in the Hindi Heart land the term ‘MAUSAM VIGNANIK’ is used to defectors who become victorious in the elections as they correctly predicted where the ’MAUSUM’ exactly is. If we see the defectors mentioned above, most of them have been defected to the BJP from BSP in 2017 and won the elections with BJP ticket  so they are the ‘MAUSAM VIGNANIKS’ of the 2017 elections and this time in 2022 again they all defected to SP, but we can’t say that they are ‘MAUSAM VIGNANIKS’ in 2017 so SP will win the 2022 elections as we have seen some ‘MAUSAM VIGNANIKS’ in West Bengal who defected to BJP from TMC have lost the elections in 2021 and subsequently the BJP.  Time decides the fate of these ‘MAUSAM VIGNANIKS’.