Four-cornered—or is it going to be a five-cornered contest in UP?

The possibility of a Bihar-type grand alliance in poll bound Uttar Pradesh appears to be receding by the day. This is largely because of the bitterness and animosity that has persisted among Jat and Muslim voters for each other in several districts of Western Uttar Pradesh. The wounds of Muzaffarnagar riots that took place over three years ago and barely months before last parliamentary polls that brought Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power in Delhi are yet to heal.

Both Jats and Muslims form a sizeable electorate in Meerut, Baghpat, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnore, Saharanpur, Aligarh, Mathura and Ghaziabad districts. Even a casual visit to these areas and stray conversations reveal that the scars left by the September 2013 riots in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli continue to linger in the minds of people.

The ruling Samajwadi Party in the State is suspected by Muslims to have looked the other way, allowing the riots to escalate since SP hoped that Jat votes would get divided between BJP and the Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal, while Muslims would have little option but to support SP. Far from this, a sharp polarisation among voters on communal lines in the wake of riots wiped out Ajit Singh’s Jat base and his party lost badly, giving BJP an undisputed sway over the region in the 2014 general elections.

Thus, ahead of another round of polls, for the State Assembly this time, all parties other than the BJP fear that any alliance with Ajit Singh would turn away Muslim voters from them. This is despite reports that Ajit Singh has won over a significant section of Jats to his side from the BJP through a number of rallies and visits in the region.

Yet, according to a Janata Dal (United) leader and former MP who has been privy to talks among parties for a possible alliance, the SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav is not impressed by Ajit Singh’s renewed forays into the Jat mainland that he had lost in the last parliamentary polls.

The reason for this simply is that despite Jats shifting away from BJP, it may take some more time for riot victims’ wounds to heal. And, thus, Mulayam Singh is not warming up to the idea of forge ties with Ajit Singh’s RLD. This was confided by the former MP to a few journalists who met him the day before Christmas.

JD(U) has assiduously been pitching in for a formidable alliance among non-BJP parties in UP before the early next year’s Vidhan Sabha polls. Yet, this could not go beyond initial probing among these parties.

The Bahujan Samaj Party led by Mayawati has already declined to be part of any alliance in UP. And a few days ago Congress general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad called reports about possibility of his party going to polls in alliance with other parties as mere rumours.

Thus Uttar Pradesh appears to be headed for yet another four-cornered contest in the assembly election.

Abid Shah is a senior independent journalist based in Delhi.