With an eye on the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in 2024, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) — both major contenders from Uttar Pradesh — are planning ways to woo Other Backward Classes (OBCs) who make up a significant 40% to 45% of the State’s electorate.
The SP is holding rallies, training sessions and conferences, all with the issue of a caste-based Census as their centrepiece, aimed at mobilising all OBCs under its umbrella. The BJP, on the other hand, is planning conferences and rallies which aim to establish separate identities for each caste group, effectively preventing them from consolidating under the common backward class grouping as the SP is drawing them towards.
OBC icon
On June 10, the saffron party held a rally remembering Maharaja Suheldev in eastern U.P.’s Ghazipur district, which was addressed by Anil Rajbhar, the BJP’s leading face from the Rajbhar community and a Minister in the U.P. government. Suheldev was a legendary king from Shravasti, whom various caste groups have attempted to appropriate as their own, including the Rajbhars, a numerically significant OBC group in eastern U.P. Before the 2022 Assembly polls, the BJP held many such social and political gatherings focused on such non-Yadav OBC groups. It is likely the party will organise more such events, appropriating OBC icons and aimed at establishing a separate identity for each caste group, in a bid to consolidate its non-Yadav OBC vote bank before the 2024 election.
The choice of Ghazipur for outreach to the Rajbhar community was interesting as the BJP lost the seat by over one lakh votes in 2019, with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Afzal Ansari defeating the BJP heavyweight and then-Union Minister Manoj Sinha. The district remained a tough electoral landscape for the party even in the 2022 Assembly polls, as it lost all the seven seats in the district and also lost five out of nine seats in neighboring Janupur.
OBC outreach
Recently, Narendra Kashyap, the president of the U.P. BJP Other Backward Classes (OBC) front also announced that the party would organise large conferences for the OBC community in all the 98 organisational districts and 17 cities of the State, to apprise them about the development work which the Union government has done for them.
“Under the Maha Sampark Abhiyan, the Backward Class Front will organise conferences with the OBC community in all 98 organisational districts of Uttar Pradesh and in all the 17 cities of the State, in which the work done for the development of OBCs in the Modi-Yogi government will be discussed by inviting intellectuals from the community. The OBC Morcha will inform about the decisions taken in the interests of OBCs in the Modi government,” Mr. Kashyap said.
Caste census focus
Similarly, the SP is planning for conferences and is organising training workshop for its party workers and leaders under the Lok Jagran Abhiyan, keeping the demand for a caste-based Census in U.P. at its core, and aiming to mobilise all OBCs.
“Yes, the Lok Jagran Abhiyan is to get workers, leaders and well-wishers ready for 2024. In the whole exercise of our party, the issue of caste Census is at the centre. You must remembered that Akhilesh [Yadav, SP chief] said we will bring revolution of backwards by giving them their due share, which can only start with the Census exercise. We need to know the population to implement welfare policies for OBCs in a right way” said Sunil Singh Yadav Sajan, SP national spokesperson and a close confidant of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.
These sessions in the form of rallies will be held in each district of the State, so that the SP can build some momentum over the caste Census issue going into the 2024 poll season.
