Constituency Watch: Brahmin Special: Madhepura, Kanpur, Lucknow and Unnao
Madhepura
Madhepura has always been a high profile seat of Yadavs that is seen as a prestige among the Yadav clan. Lalu Prasad Yadav once famously took on Sharad Yadav here and ensured a battle royale among the two tallest standing Yadav leaders of Bihar. Today, both are near their expiry dates and are fighting proxy battles of secularism. This is also the Mecca of OBCs as it is the home district of the late B.P. Mandal who headed the famous Mandal Commission that eventually led to the creation of reservation for OBCs.
The fight for Madhepura has become a battle of prestige for Nitish Kumar who has been virtually camping here for the last few weeks. In fact the joke in Bihar these days is that the entire secretariat has been moved from Patna to Madhepura to not only save Sharad Yadav but also to save JDU as a party. If Sharad loses from here, then the survival of the Nitish government would become untenable and even JDU as an entity may not survive the resultant drift. Such is the nature of politics that a man who was virtually invincible just a year ago and was being projected as a real prime ministerial possibility is today staring at political oblivion just for his one misstep provoked by secularism.
RJD has put up the infamous Yadav Don, Pappu Yadav and Lalu Prasad has managed to bring in a large number of Muslims to support his candidature. BJP has smartly given ticket to Vijay Singh Khushwaha who has toiled hard to bring in all the MBC votes into the saffron kitty. With Yadav and Muslim vote getting split almost vertically, the unlikely combination of Khushwaha-Brahmin coalition may tilt the scales in favour of BJP here. With almost 2.5 Lakhs out of 17 lakh voters, Brahmins will prove a crucial role in Madhepura to decide the eventual winner.
Today, BJP’s caste calculation seems to have worked out tremendously well in Madhepura as the party is in overall pole-position and Nitish Kumar’s untiring work seems to have come unstuck as Sharad Yadav is trailing at the third position by almost the day’s end. All the non-Yadav, non-Muslim votes have coalesced towards BJP (including large portions of Dalits). This lead gives enough indications of a BJP win here, but we are not yet calling this seat as we need to do a caste-wise analysis at the end of the day.
Lucknow
Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Karma Bhoomi of his Prime Ministerial years, Lucknow is another Brahmin reserved seat that has never been won by a non-Brahmin in almost 4 decades. Can Rajnath Singh create history today is what we are watching out for, especially as H.N. Bahuguna’s daughter and the erstwhile state Congress chief, Rita Bahuguna Joshi is the Brahmin opposition to BJP president.
Lucknow voters this time seem to be once again giving a thumbs-up to BJP cutting across caste divides as Rajnath Singh is easily leading across all demographics. Brahmins too have voted in sufficiently large numbers to put all doubts at rest about them deserting the party today.
Kanpur
Shri Prakash Jaiswal who has had a hattrick in Kanpur by now is actually facing little localized anti-incumbency but the anti-Congress mood may hurt him in the end. BJP’s own internal dynamics are not really in play here as reported by the media, for the party has put up a united front in support of one of its 90s stalwarts, Murli Manohar Joshi of the original Ram Janam Bhoomi triumvirate.
In 2009, the contest here was quite tough in reality as Jaiswal of Congress managed to take leads in 3 out of the 5 assembly segments while BJP took pole position in the remaining 2. Can Congress maintain those slender leads with the prevailing Modi wave in urban India, especially of the heartland? We are tracking two interesting assembly segments here in Kanpur – Govindnagar is the swing assembly segment which will give us some inkling into the overall swing of the constituency whereas Shishamau is the segment where Congress had taken a big lead of 12k in 2009. Of course, it is the caste vote swing that will tell us the real picture, so we are also keeping a close tab on that.
Today, Kanpur is with Murli Manohar Joshi; Brahmins have voted almost one-sided to the BJP and even among Thakurs BJP is the number one choice. Muslims are getting split between Congress and SP, while Dalits are voting more to Congress as compared to BJP, but their number one choice is BSP at close to 50%. This kind of demographic support even in Congress stronghold like Shishamau gives a clear edge to Joshi.
Unnao
Here probably Congress is ahead, the only seat in the Brahmin-belt of UP where Congress still has a chance of retaining apart from Rae Bareli. Although we need to do a deeper caste analysis, what is skewing the picture in Anu Tandon’s favour is that she is getting almost overwhelming number of Brahmin votes of close to 75%. It would indeed be a big surprise if BJP could beat that kind of demographic to emerge victorious.