Given the reemer­gence of fed­er­al­ist pol­i­tics across the coun­try, it is very un­likely that the Bharatiya Janta Party will form a gov­ern­ment in the elec­torally sig­nif­i­cant state of Ut­tar Pradesh, says po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Ku­mar San­jay Singh. Fac­tor­ing the ground lost by BJP in West­ern UP, the loss of liveli­hood and earn­ing to mar­ginal farm­ers in Poor­van­chal, the eco­nomic fail­ure of the Yogi Adityanath gov­ern­ment, fail­ure of com­mu­nal po­lar­iza­tion, the re­vival of so­cial jus­tice and shift from uni­tary pol­i­tics, the au­thor who is As­so­ci­ate Pro­fes­sor in the De­part­ment of His­tory, Swami Shrad­dhanand Col­lege, Delhi Uni­ver­sity says that at best in UP there will be a hung as­sem­bly with SP-led al­liance as the largest pre-poll al­liance.

ASSEM­BLY ELEC­TIONS IN GOA, MA­NIPUR, PUN­JAB, UT­TARAK­HAND AND UT­TAR PRADESH has been widely re­ported as the semi-fi­nals of the forth­com­ing Par­lia­men­tary elec­tion in 2024. While all these elec­tions will have a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the con­tours of the anti-BJP po­lit­i­cal al­liance(s) that may be formed in the runup to the par­lia­men­tary elec­tion; the out­come of the UP as­sem­bly elec­tion may di­rectly im­pact BJP’S stand­ing as the dom­i­nant po­lit­i­cal force in In­dia since 2014.

It is ger­mane to point out that BJP’S su­perla­tive per­for­mance in the UP as­sem­bly elec­tion 2017 paved the way for not only de­mor­al­iz­ing the op­po­si­tion par­ties but also con­sol­i­dated BJP’S po­si­tion in the par­lia­men­tary elec­tion. Per­haps this ex­plains why UP as­sem­bly elec­tion re­sults are be­ing awaited with ea­ger an­tic­i­pa­tion.

It seems to me that the exit polls for the UP as­sem­bly elec­tion 2022 are once again des­tined to miss the tar­get by a wide berth.

Peo­ple of the sub­con­ti­nent are known for their pas­sion for pol­i­tics which is milked by the main­stream me­dia. It serves a three-course meal with the soup of opin­ion polls, the ap­pe­tizer of exit polls and the main course of fi­nal re­sults. Of late the poll pre­dic­tions and the exit polls are of­ten at vari­ance with the fi­nal re­sult of the elec­tion; West Ben­gal is the most re­cent ex­am­ple of poll­sters ex­ag­ger­at­ing BJP’S per­for­mance in their opin­ion and exit polls. It seems to me that the exit polls for the UP as­sem­bly elec­tion 2022 are once again des­tined to miss the tar­get by a wide berth.

Peo­ple of the sub­con­ti­nent are known for their pas­sion for pol­i­tics which is milked by the main­stream me­dia. It serves a three-course meal with the soup of opin­ion polls, the ap­pe­tizer of exit polls and the main course of fi­nal re­sults.

Most exit polls sug­gest an elec­toral win for BJP, six poll­sters sug­gest a land­slide vic­tory for the party match­ing its per­for­mance in the last as­sem­bly elec­tion. An ag­gre­gate of exit polls gives the BJP and its al­lies 241 seats, while the SP al­liance is pegged at win­ning less than 150 seats. BSP and INC are slated to win 11 and 4 seats re­spec­tively in the poll of exit polls. It seems to me that the exit polls fail to take ac­count of 6 sig­nif­i­cant fac­tors that will ad­versely im­pact BJP’S elec­toral for­tunes:

• BJP has lost con­sid­er­able ground in west­ern UP, which was the bridge­head of its dom­i­nance in states’ elec­toral pol­i­tics. Both the cen­tral and state gov­ern­ment bear the onus for this de­cline, cen­tre’s farm laws were hugely un­pop­u­lar amongst the peas­antry and the state gov­ern­ment was found want­ing on the pay­ment of sug­ar­cane dues. This fail­ure re­sulted in west­ern UP be­com­ing one of the bas­tions of the year­long peas­ant move­ment.
• East­ern UP, known as Poor­van­chal, did not see tren­chant peas­ants. How­ever, agri­cul­ture in this re­gion is less pros­per­ous than in west­ern UP. Poor­van­chal leads the tally in the state with the high­est per­cent­age of land­hold­ing be­low one hectare. With 84% of land hold­ings be­low one hectare, most of the farm­ers in the re­gion are mar­ginal farm­ers who can­not af­ford the loss of stand­ing crops to stray cat­tle. Since stray cat­tle men­ace is con­sid­ered to be a fall out of state gov­ern­ment pol­icy mea­sures there is con­sid­er­able dis­quiet against the state gov­ern­ment.
• The state has failed on the eco­nomic front and has emerged as the third most poor state of In­dia in Niti Ayo­g’s Mul­ti­di­men­sional Poverty In­dex. 37.79% pop­u­la­tion of UP is poor. Youth and peas­ant house­hold are the most af­fected from this Per capita in­come of the state lags be­hind that of the na­tional av­er­age, with the growth rate rural in­come is the low­est in the state. Youth is fac­ing un­em­ploy­ment which is made worse be­cause of the re­luc­tance of the gov­ern­ment to fill ex­ist­ing va­can­cies in var­i­ous de­part­ments. Re­cur­rent mis­man­age­ment of re­cruit­ment pro­ce­dures has re­sulted in protests by the youth, the most re­cent be­ing the ag­i­ta­tion against the rail­way re­cruit­ment board which was crushed by bru­tal po­lice re­pres­sion.  The pro-mar­ket pol­icy of the cen­tre failed to reign in ris­ing prices of es­sen­tial com­modi­ties which have hurt ur­ban and rural con­sumers, es­pe­cially the salaried classes.
• Fail­ure of the cam­paign of com­mu­nal po­lar­iza­tion, which has served BJP’S elec­toral am­bi­tions in the past. In the cur­rent elec­tion, BJP failed to cre­ate a ma­jori­tar­ian po­lar­iza­tion be­cause of its los­ing trac­tion amongst the peas­ants, youth and to a lesser ex­tent amongst the salaried Para­dox­i­cally its poli­cies of CAA, cow vig­i­lan­tism, lock­down of abat­toirs, re­strict on the sale of non-veg­e­tar­ian items, etc. which are but dog-whis­tle for the de­mo­niza­tion of mi­nori­ties re­sulted in ce­ment­ing elec­toral di­vi­sions that ex­isted amongst mi­nor­ity vot­ers.

• Re­vival of the agenda of so­cial jus­tice that not only wit­nessed the res­ur­rec­tion of the Sama­jwadi Party that emerged in the hey­days of Man­dal era pol­i­tics in the Gangetic re­gion but also re­sulted in the drift of sev­eral non-Ya­dav OBC lead­ers from BJP to SP.
• The shift of the po­lit­i­cal topog­ra­phy that had be­tween 2014 to 2019 favoured Uni­tary pol­i­tics to a topog­ra­phy which is in­clined to­ward fed­er­al­ist pol­i­tics.
  Prof. Sub­barao had in his sem­i­nal works pointed out that In­dian pol­i­tics fol­lows a long-term sub­ter­ranean trend whereby po­lit­i­cal topog­ra­phy os­cil­lates be­tween the al­ter­nate trends of uni­tary pol­i­tics and fed­er­al­ist. Sev­eral trends tes­tify to the emer­gence and con­sol­i­da­tion of the trend to­wards fed­eral pol­i­tics such as:a) tus­sle be­tween state and cen­tre over prior ap­proval to CBI,
  b) over re­spec­tive ju­ris­dic­tion of cen­tre and state over trans­fer and post­ing of IAS cadre of­fi­cers,
  c) over ju­ris­dic­tion of the Gov­er­nor vis a vis state gov­ern­ment in run­ning state ad­min­is­tra­tion and in the ap­point­ment of Vice-Chan­cel­lors of state uni­ver­si­ties; and
  d) es­pe­cially the di­ver­gence of the rate of the elec­toral suc­cess of the party in power in the cen­tre in par­lia­men­tary vs as­sem­bly elec­tions.

If these six trends are taken into ac­count of exit polls for the UP as­sem­bly elec­tion would need to be re­vised as un­der:

BJP+: 145 TO 165

SP+: 160 TO 190

BSP:    16 TO 30

INC:        6 TO 20

OTH­ERS: 1 TO 4

In spite of los­ing trac­tion amongst peas­ants, OBCs, un­em­ployed youth and mi­nori­ties, BJP+ is still poised to gain up­wards of 150 seats in UP be­cause of the speci­ficity of BJP’S po­lit­i­cal and elec­toral strate­gies. In his sem­i­nal mono­graph on BJP, Shri Pita­m­bar Dutt Kaushik had noted that the party uti­lizes elec­toral vic­to­ries to es­tab­lish and con­sol­i­date its party or­ga­ni­za­tion, he had fur­ther in­di­cated that the party or­ga­ni­za­tion repli­cates the units of ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­ture whereby a hi­er­ar­chi­cal and mul­ti­tiered or­ga­ni­za­tional struc­ture is cre­ated link­ing the ba­sic units at vil­lage level to the state cap­i­tal.

With such an elab­o­rate or­ga­ni­za­tional struc­ture, the de­cline in BJP’S vote share is never as pre­cip­i­tous as that of per­son­al­ity-dri­ven po­lit­i­cal par­ties. The wide range be­tween the lower and higher range of seats be­ing 25 seats of BJP and 30 seats for SP need ex­pla­na­tion. There are some 10 seats where BJP and SP are locked in a close con­test. Ad­di­tion­ally, SP and BSP are in a close con­test in ap­prox­i­mately 5 seats. Even in the 2017 UP as­sem­bly elec­tion, many seats were de­cided by a mar­gin of 2000 votes and be­low, since there was a strong Modi wave BJP suc­ceeded in clos­ing most of these close con­tests. In this elec­tion, SP is poised to turn these close con­tests in its favour.