Both Yadavs and Kurmis are prosperous Other Backward Castes (OBC) communities in Uttar Pradesh (UP). Officially, Kurmis constitute about 9% of the state’s 54% OBC population — a figure disputed by the Apna Dal. The party has always accused the authorities of manipulating demographic numbers to suit the Yadavs. However, with the Kurmi population largely concentrated in Eastern UP and some pockets of Central UP, Kurmis hold veto power in about 150 assembly and 20 Lok Sabha seats.

Patel, who would have turned 74 had he not died in a road accident in 2009, was recently commemorated by top politicians on the occasion of the leader’s birth anniversary on July 2, including Union home minister Amit Shah and former U.P. chief minister Akhilesh Yadav. His party, however, is now split down the middle with wife Krishna Patel, running Apna Dal (K) which is an ally of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and daughter Anupriya Patel, a Union minister and National Democratic Alliance partner, running Apna Dal (Sone Lal). In fact, both family members held separate events to commemorate the Kurmi leader, and each ally used it for their own political agenda: Shah used the platform to exhort allies to energetically join the NDA’s Mission 300 to make Narendra Modi prime minister for the third time in 2024; Akhilesh Yadav focused on their ambitious demand for caste census.

Patel, who held a doctorate in Physics, was a founder-member of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and had picked up lessons in caste mobilisation from his one-time mentor Kanshi Ram. He had serious differences with Mayawati after she became chief minister in 1995 in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Miffed over poor representation of the Kurmis in both the political and administrative set-up of the state, he resigned from the party general secretary’s position in July — a month after Mayawati took charge. In his letter to the late Kanshi Ram, he accused the government of treating Kurmis badly.

Before launching the Apna Dal on November 4, 1995, he had founded the All India Kurmi Mahasabha and organised a massive rally in Lucknow’s Begum Hazrat Mahal Park for a show of strength. Kurmi leaders, cutting across party lines, had attended it.

Tractor trolleys loaded with Kurmis and some other backward castes could be seen actively moving in the Eastern belt of the state, mobilising votes and collecting money under the slogan, ‘One note, one vote’. In fact, many prosperous Kurmis handsomely donated to the Apna Dal as it became a symbol of pride. For them, Apna Dal belonged to them just as the SP to Yadavs and the BSP to Dalits.

All that support, however, did not translate immediately to electoral success. Patel contested the 1996 assembly election but polled barely 2,400 votes. The party finished fourth in over two dozen assembly seats in Allahabad, Varanasi and Azamgarh in 1996. Its 237 candidates gained 1.5% votes. The Apna Dal tasted its first victory in 2000 — almost six years of its formation. The Apna Dal won the by-poll held in February of that year in the upper caste-dominated Pratapgarh, which jolted the BJP, SP and the Congress. Patel’s formula of KM ( Kurmi-Muslim) seemed to have worked: Apna Dal’s winning candidate was a Muslim, Abdul Salam.

Interestingly, Patel never won any assembly or Lok Sabha seat, though his vote share rose steadily between 1996, when he contested from Pratapgarh and 1999, when he contested from Phulpur Lok Sabha constituency, once represented by the late Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru. Incidentally, Patel had contested the election from jail with broken limbs. He was beaten by the police after his supporters manhandled the superintendent of police.

Dilip Patel, who was with Sone Lal Patel at the time of the party formation in 1995, said, “He never contested elections to win them but to mobilise the Kurmis and other backward castes. But the victory in the by-poll from upper caste-dominated Pratapgarh in 2000 gave a major fillip to the party’s dreams to equal participation in power.”

Sone Lal Patel never hesitated in rubbing shoulders with people with an allegedly shady past. He released the book written by Om Prakash Srivastava alias Babloo, a notorious gangster who was given a life term in 2008 for the murder of a customs officer in Allahabad in 1993. Srivastava wrote a book, Adhoora Khwab in 2005, while in jail awaiting trial — and Patel released it.

He also took the help of Atiq Ahmad, the recently slain mafia-don-turned politician to build the KM vote-bank. Ahmad served as the state president of Apna Dal from 1999 to 2002 and won the Allahabad West assembly seat in 2002. In 2004, Ahmad fought and won the Phulpur Lok Sabha constituency, but on a Samajwadi Party ticket.

The split

Dilip Patel moved to the Apna Dal (K), the faction led by Sone Lal’s wife Krishna Patel and second daughter Pallavi Patel. The other faction is led by Sone Lal Patel’s other daughter, and Union minister Anupriya Patel.

After his death, Apna Dal had started shrinking when Anupriya decided to become a poll partner of the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Prior to that, she had won the 2012 assembly elections from Rohaniya constituency in Varanasi.

After winning the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Mirzapur, she resigned from her assembly seat. Sharp differences cropped up in the party as mother Krishna Singh, who was the president of the party after her husband's death, staked claim over the seat. However, Anupriya wanted her husband Ashish Patel to get the ticket.

Eventually, Krishna Singh contested and lost the by-election. But in the process the family and the party split. Anupriya and six others were expelled from the party in 2015. She registered Apna Dal (Sone Lal) in 2016.

As part of the NDA, Anupriya's party won nine assembly seats in the 2017 assembly polls, 12 in the 2022 assembly elections and two in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In fact, it was Patel who had first allied with the BJP in 2007 for the assembly polls.

The other faction won an assembly seat in alliance with the SP in 2022. The party had earlier contested the 2015 by-poll from Rohaniya. Anupriya's support to BJP is crucial as Kurmis play a crucial role in elections in East UP. Today Apna Dal (S) is a strong ally of the BJP. Anupriya’s husband Ashish, is a cabinet minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet, and the Kurmis once again harbour a wish to have a CM from their community.