A grand alliance in UP

The Election Commission has consecrated son Akhilesh Yadav’s inner-party coup against his father Mulayam Singh by allotting him the cycle symbol. This gives him a free hand to strike alliances and withhold the ticket to bahubalis. To ensure a Bihar-type win, his potential partners are the Congress and Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). Both parties have personality-driven pockets of influence but not the pan-state appeal of Lalu Prasad Yadav, the second wheel in the Nitish Kumar-led alliance in Bihar. The ability of the Congress and the RLD to transfer their votes to the SP is also unproven unlike the smooth switchover that took place among the Bihar grand alliance partners.

The UP CM and his chief strategist, Ram Gopal Yadav, will have to keep in good humour all the Samajwadi Party aspirants who will have to sacrifice their seats to alliance partners. The duo must also contend with the spoiler effect of regional musclemen who have to be kept out for Akhilesh to beat anti-incumbency. And, the last may not have been heard of Mulayam Singh’s pique against his son. On the other side, the BJP is confident of retaining the social alliance that helped it harvest 90 per cent of the seats in 2014. But for western UP where agrarian distress has led to disenchantment, there is nothing to suggest any major social shift against the BJP.

Akhilesh and his allies will also have to factor in the two elephants in the UP poll arena. The BSP registered a duck in 2014 because it could not top up its core vote. But it can return into contention if the extremely backward castes are disenchanted with the BJP because of the other elephant — demonetisation. With strategist Prashant Kishore likely to be in his corner, the UP CM must fashion a pan-caste appeal to take the wind out of BJP’s sails. He has earned the tag of being development oriented by the calculated unveiling of mega development projects just before the elections. The challenge before him is to retain the core vote as well as beat the caste trap by extending his appeal.