Lok Sabha election 2024: In parts of Purvanchal, ‘gathbandhan’ holds sway

Sandeep Dikshit

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Azamgarh, May 23

If there is an apparent consolidation of the backward vote to the SP-Congress, it is here in eastern UP’s twin constituencies of Azamgarh and Lalganj.

Voting history too favours SP

• Recent voting history also favours the SP as it won all five Vidhan Sabha seats falling under the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat. It is also favourably placed in the next door Lalganj where it did a repeat
• In fact, the BJP has never won any of the 10 Assembly seats in Lalganj and Azamgarh since its formation in 1980. The only exception was 2017 when a SP prodigal’s son had contested on the Lotus symbol

“In both constituencies, the SP-Congress is assured of vote base of four lakh. The possibility of Muslim votes fracturing to the BSP is low despite its Muslim candidate in Azamgarh,” says Rajesh Maurya, running a cement agency in Bindra Bazar.

“This is because Muslims will be consolidating towards the SP after the suspicious death of Mukhtar Ansari, former MLA from neighbouring Ghazipur district, and Guddu Jamali from the BSP has joined the SP,” says Akhtar Rasool, who joined the conversation from an adjacent tea stall. It was Jamali who had indirectly helped popular Bhojpuri singer Nirahua win the Azamgarh Lok Sabha byelection in 2022 by garnering 2.5 lakh votes. This led to the surprise defeat of SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav’s cousin Dharmendra Yadav, considered next star in the making in the extended Mulayam Singh Yadav clan.

Dharmendra would also be anxious to break a 10-year jinx, as he last won in 2014. “The SP must not repeat the mistake of being complacent. Akhilesh was overconfident in the 2022 bypoll. He did not even once come here to campaign,” observes Rakesh Pal, who teaches in a school in Rani ki Sarai, 15 km from Bindra Bazar.

“Dharmendra needn’t worry much. The key is to ensure SP-Congress voters turn up in this intense heat. We have seen a fall in voting percentage as it has got hotter,” reckons SP’s Jagdish Yadav.

However, supporters of BJP candidate Nirahua or Dinesh Lal Yadav, have set their sights of pulling away a section of the Yadav vote. BJP activist Naresh Pandey sweating it out in Sathiaon, outside Azamgarh town, feels the fusion of a part of Yadav vote along with that of BJP’s traditional base of upper castes, labarthis (beneficiaries of Modi’s freebies) and backwards like the Mauryas will make it tough for Dharmendra to win.

But scattered conversations with some of the backwards who, with the emergence of PM Narendra Modi, gave BJP the additional ballast to register eye-catching wins in UP and Bihar, suggest that the attraction of the Centre’s freebie scheme is eroding and the Congress’ promise of Rs 1 lakh to each woman is being seriously weighed. “The Rs 2.5 lakh for each house under Akhilesh’s Lohia Awas Yojna was better. They also gave a solar panel,” says Gulabo Devi, a farm labourer of Lalganj.

The BJP has poached the sitting BSP MP who is now its candidate for the reserved constituency. But that doesn’t level the playing field for the SP believes it is placed comfortably with a vote bank of 40 per cent Yadavs and Muslims.