UP Diary: With trivia dominating the buzz, is it silly season in UP?

On 9 November, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) expelled three office-bearers for attending a wedding. The expulsion of former Meerut division in-charge Prashant Gautam, district in-charge Mahavir Singh Pradhan and Dinesh Kazipur from the party raised eyebrows, more so because it was BSP national general secretary Munqad Ali’s son Farman’s wedding that they attended. What could be ‘anti-party’ about that?

Insiders claim that BSP chief Mayawati herself had ordered party leaders to stay away from the wedding because Farman’s sister, Sumbul Rana, is the Samajwadi Party candidate for the Meerapur assembly seat. Sumbul is also the daughter-in-law of another prominent BSP leader in the region, Qadir Rana.

Apparently, photos with Sumbul and Qadir would compromise the chances of Shah Nazar, the BSP candidate from Meerapur. Defying the diktat led to the expulsions. Meerapur is witnessing a multi-cornered contest. Chandrashekhar Ravan’s Azad Samaj Party and the AIMIM have also fielded candidates.

The presence of so many ‘anti-BJP’ parties in the fray is expected to make the Samajwadi Party’s task difficult, with the contest practically confined between Sumbul Rana and the BJP–RLD candidate Mithilesh Pal. In Mainpuri district, yet another family drama is playing out.

RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav’s son-in-law Tej Pratap Yadav is the SP candidate for the Karhal seat. While his contest is with the BJP, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s brother Abhay Ram Yadav’s son-in-lawAnujesh Yadav is also in the fray as an independent. The BJP, which had successfully fielded a Yadav candidate from the constituency in 2022, has done the same again.

Anujesh is Samajwadi Party MP Dharmendra Yadav’s brother-in-law. Dharmendra’s father Abhay Ram Yadav is Mulayam Singh’s younger brother. In such a crowded field of familial candidates, if the BJP manages to spirit away a significant number of Yadav votes, the SP could be in trouble in what has been their stronghold.

Akhilesh Yadav won Karhal in the 2022 UP polls, and vacated it when he was elected Kannauj MP in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Meanwhile, in Moradabad, BJP candidate Ramvir Singh Thakur from Kundarki is busy invoking Allah and making Muslims ‘swear on khuda’ that they will vote for him.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said, “I have heard that BJP people are changing their attire just to get votes... don’t forget that Sita Mata was kidnapped by someone who changed attire.” This was a jibe at Thakur, who donned a skull cap and scarf while addressing his constituency.

With 60 per cent Muslims, Kundarki has as many as 11 Muslim candidates in the fray. It seems Thakur, who has lost the election twice before, has been fielded to try and split Muslim votes further. Kundarki is also where the SP has raised an alarm about missing voters.

SP candidate Haji Rizwan claims that thousands of voters find their names missing from the revised electoral rolls. He accuses the BJP of resorting to foul play, having been unable to win a fair contest. Ghaziabad, next to the national capital, is witnessing a stiff fight between the BJP and the BSP. The SP has fielded Singhraj Jatav, a Dalit, against the BJP’s Sanjeev Sharma and the BSP’s Parmanand Garg.

While Ghaziabad has traditionally been a BJP stronghold, the opposition is raising the question of the BJP’s failure to deliver. All the people seem to have received is more garbage, pollution, transport bottlenecks, poor law and order and communal polarisation that has disrupted businesses and increased tension. Will public disaffection affect the BJP’s chances?

As for the ‘controversy’ surrounding Naseem Solanki’s temple visit, that seems to have died a natural death. The SP candidate from Sisamau’s visit to the Van- Khandeshwar temple in Kanpur to light a diya on Diwali drew criticism from both Hindus and Muslims. While Hindu priests ‘purified’ the temple with 1,000 litres of Gangajal, a Muslim cleric issued a fatwa declaring that the act went against Islam’s prohibition on idol worship.

The Telegraph quoted Solanki as saying, “God is not anyone’s property; anyone can seek blessings,” and that she would visit again, if invited.

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A serious case of missing voters

By-elections tend to be won by the ruling party, as voters reason that their interests are best served by the party in power. The nine by-elections in Uttar Pradesh on 20 November therefore may make no difference to the BJP’s majority in the UP assembly. To that extent, they could be seen as largely inconsequential. Yet, these by-elections are important for both Yogi Adityanath and the Samajwadi Party.

Smarting after losing 33 Lok Sabha seats in June, Adityanath is keen to prove that he can still deliver seats in the state. The Samajwadi Party, which is contesting all nine seats for the INDIA alliance—the Congress having strategically ceded its claim—has the opportunity to prove that its performance in the Lok Sabha election was not a fluke.

With battlelines sharply drawn, the Election Commission of India had no reason to defer the dates from 13 November to 20 November, apart from the Rashtriya Lok Dal’s plea of Ganga snan on Kartik Purnima falling on 15 November. Hello? By citing such a flimsy pretext, the Commission has set a bad precedent. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has alleged that the deferment was at the behest of the NDA to gain more time for manipulations.

In his interactions with the media, Akhilesh Yadav recalled that after the 2022 assembly elections in the state, he had said that SP voters were prevented from voting by having their names struck off the electoral rolls.

In response to the notice served by the Election Commission, daring him to produce evidence, the Samajwadi Party had presented a list of 18,000 such voters with their affidavits. Since then, the Commission has maintained a studied silence. Why?

Significantly, even the BJP made similar allegations after its electoral debacle in the Lok Sabha election earlier this year. State president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary and Sangam Lal Gupta made the allegations after the loss in Pratapgarh. The ECI has been deaf to all allegations, denying any irregularity and claiming that it regularly updates voters’ lists by removing the names of those who are deceased and those who have moved elsewhere, especially women after marriage.

Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, also has the highest Muslim and Dalit populations in the country. According to a Newslaundry report, the 2011 census showed 7.7 crore women who were eligible to vote in UP, of which only 7 crore women were listed on the electoral rolls. This discrepancy was more pronounced when it came to Dalit and Muslim women, the report highlighted.

A state government official who has just retired from service said, on condition of anonymity, that in the last few elections in UP, he noticed EVMs and VVPAT machines were being marked before being distributed to polling booths.

Earlier, it used to be random distribution. He also alleged that, contrary to the earlier practice of hiring local agencies and personnel to check and ensure that the electronic machines are operational, this exercise has been centralised and handed over to a firm in Gujarat.

Smell a rat, anyone?