Akhilesh wheels out 2024 formula with accent on caste census
Akhilesh, who had played MY(Muslim-Yadav)-OBC-Dalit card, had also dabbed it with a bit of the soft Hindutva formula in the 2022 U.P. assembly polls.
LUCKNOW Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is guiding his party into the 2024 Lok Sabha elections on the same formula that he scripted for the 2022 U.P. assembly elections and highlighting the caste census as the main theme.
Though the caste census is an old issue in the SP’s armoury, this time it seems that Akhilesh has turned it into his main weapon in the run-up to the 2024 LS polls. Akhilesh has launched his statewide campaign themed on caste census ahead of 2024 polls. In an intermittent series of solo rath yatras -- on a plush bus -- Akhilesh will travel the whole of U.P. whipping up sentiments on caste census and garnering support for the agenda.
Having coined the abbreviation PDA which stands for Pichada, Dalit, and Alpsankhyak (backwards, Dalits, and minorities),the SP chief also reiterates almost daily that this combination will defeat the NDA (the BJP-led coalition).
On June 5, the principal opposition party in Uttar Pradesh, which has the highest number of Lok Sabha seats (80), launched a statewide intermittent serial campaign from Lakhimpur Kheri. The second began in Sitapur on June 9 and 10. The third one is in the planning stage.
Each two-day leg of the campaign is chalked out. On day one, SP national general Shivpal Yadav or Ramgopal Yadav or both, address a cadre training camp in a Lok Sabha constituency. The next day Akhilesh Yadav takes over and takes out a “rath yatra” and addresses a gathering.
While the campaign is called “Lok Jagaran Abhiyan”, the bus ride is called “Lok Jagaran Yatra”. The common tagline “Samajik Nyay; Jaatiya Janganana Rasta (Caste census is the path to social justice)” is boldly printed on all sides of the red bus that Akhilesh rides.
“Whenever the Samajwadis get a chance, we will get the caste census done. Till the time we are out of government, we will continue to tell the government that social justice without caste census is not possible,” Akhilesh Yadav said in Sitapur district’s Naimisharanya, pilgrimage centre, during his Samajik Nyay Yatra on June 10.
The caste census idea that the SP has been talking about for many years is primarily aimed at OBCs (other backward classes)—the single-largest section of voters in U.P at an estimated 32%. Both the BJP and the SP are vying to win the support of this bloc.
While the BJP has been non-committal on the caste census, the SP has demanded and promised it. “It was in our election manifesto in 2022 and will be among the topmost promises in the 2024 manifesto,” said a senior SP leader. In Uttar Pradesh, all elections since 2014 have largely been BJP vs SP.
The BJP’s original core vote in the state was upper caste Hindus and the SP’s Muslims and Yadavs (MY). Upper caste Hindus in the state constitute roughly 18% of the population, Muslims 20% and Yadavs about 9%. It is the fight for the OBC and Dalit votes between the SP and the BJP that holds more interest.
Samajwadi Party Pichada Varg Prakoshtha (backward classes cell) state president Rajpal Kashyap says: “How can there be social justice without considering a caste group’s share in the population?”
The SP has an old slogan “Jitni jiski sankhya bhaari, utni uski bhaagidaari (the share of a caste group in reservation and government schemes should be in proportion to its share in the population)”.
Kashyap also says: “It’s an irony that the country is following the 1931 census caste data. So much has changed since then. Pakistan got carved out of India. How can that data be relevant today? There are 79 main OBC castes in U.P. and we believe that now OBCs are over 60% of the population. Why can’t the census, when it asks about fridge, TV, computer, kuchcha or pucca house, tap or phone connection, also ask the respondents about caste?” Kashyap and the prakostha carried out a caste census campaign in eastern U.P. district between March and April, and says it will soon launch the second phase of it.
SK Dwivedi, political analyst and former head of the department of political science at Lucknow University, says: “It’s all targeted towards the approaching polls. The late Rajni Kothari, in the 1960s-70s wrote in one of his books, that Indian politics cannot get rid of caste elements.”
“He was so true. Indian politics is not able to get rid of caste and religion. And this is unfortunate. It is clear that Akhilesh wants to add OBCs and Dalits to his traditional Muslim-Yadav vote bank in favour of his party. And the BJP was also engaged in a counter-narrative to attract OBCs and Dalits votes to itself,” Dwivedi says.
Akhilesh, who had played MY(Muslim-Yadav)-OBC-Dalit card, had also dabbed it with a bit of the soft Hindutva formula in the 2022 U.P. assembly polls. All these steps helped him increase his party’s tally of seats from 47 (in 2017) to 111 in the state assembly.
He is using the same formula for the next Parliamentary elections with a special emphasis on caste census. “How can there be sabka vikas without a caste census?” the SP chief had asked while taking a jibe at BJP’s ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ slogan at an event at the SP headquarters in Lucknow. Akhilesh’s next rath yatra with the “social justice through caste census” theme will traverse Hardoi soon.
