Amid the narrative of a two cornered fight in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, is the seat of Zahoorabad, which is an exception to the rule, and is presenting the BJP with quite a dilemma.
Here, Om Prakash Rajbhar, president of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) who is the sitting MLA and ally of the Samajwadi Party (SP), after breaking away from the BJP, is facing a challenge not just from Kallichran Rajbhar of the BJP, but from former MLA Shadab Fatima.
In the series of Saffron vs Red-Yellow fights across Eastern U.P., this seat has seen a cobalt blue holdout of the BSP. Ms Fatima, who hails from same village as Ghazipur's most famous son, writer Rahi Masoom Raza, won this seat in 2012 on an SP ticket, the first time that the party won the seat, was a Minister in the Akhilesh Yadav-led government, and is credited with much of the development work done in the area. This includes getting Qasimabad (in Ghazipur) declared a "Tehsil" , an administrative upgradation that affects funding and other works there, as well as getting many roads, a hospital and a PWD guest house sanctioned in the area. In 2017, she joined Shivpal Yadav's breakway faction of SP, and O.P. Rajbhar won the seat as an ally of the BJP. This time around, with Shivpal Yadav reconciled with his nephew, she hoped to get the ticket but found the SBSP chief Rajbhar as a stumbling block as he had switched sides to the SP.
"It is absolutely wrong to say that the BSP is not fighting hard, look at me, Behan Mayawatiji asked a person who has won before to fight this seat. In 2012, when I won this seat, O.P. Rajbhar finished third, and Kallicharan Rajbhar was in the second position," said Ms. Fatima when The Hindu caught up with her.
While the BJP's initial calculation has been that with the two Rajbhar candidates, it could split the 70,000 strong community vote there, and that Ms. Fatima may split the SP's Muslim vote of around 30,000 to give an edge to their candidate, things are not that simple. With the Dalit population, supporters of BSP, a solid 70,000, Ms. Fatima thinks her work in the area will help her draw votes from all communities. She points to her election office premises lent to her by a Rajput supporter and counts out the Bhumihar, Chouhan and Brahmin supporters in the crowd around her.
Even Sunil Chouhan, a resident of Shahbazpur, otherwise a staunch supporter of the BJP, especially of the free rations scheme says that Ms. Fatima will gain support on the basis of her work. " Kaam to kiya hai Shadab Fatima ne," he says. This brings the BJP to the dilemma facing them on the seat, whether to transfer their votes to the BSP to defeat an unfaithful ally in Mr. Om Prakash Rajbhar or pull on hoping that the upper caste votes of around 65,000 plus the whole Nonia Chouhan block of 30,000 helps get their candidate elected.
" Sab kuch iss par nirbhar hai ki Nonia Chouhan kidhar baithega, (it all depends on which side the Nonia Chouhans vote" said a BJP worker in the area. In the delicate caste arithmetic characterising the electoral battle in Eastern U.P., a tri-cornered contest in Zahoorabad is not a simple stacking of numbers.
