Etawah: Will BSP be the dark horse on seat of Kanshi Ram-Mulayam bonhomie?
The Etawah Lok Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh has not been any party’s stronghold. The Congress and the SP have won this seat four times each, the BJP thrice and the BSP once
The Etawah Lok Sabha constituency witnessed bonhomie between veteran Dalit leader Kanshi Ram and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav in 1991 when the Bahujan Samaj Party founder was elected to Parliament from the seat. Since then, the BSP has never been able to repeat the success in Lok Sabha elections on the seat, which has been a reserved one since 2009 and has a sizeable population of Dalit voters, but the party has done well in assembly elections because of the caste and social equations. Now, it remains to be seen whether the BSP will be a dark horse in Etawah in the ongoing parliamentary polls.
The BSP has fielded former RLD MP from Hathras Sarika Singh. She is pitted against sitting BJP MP and former Union minister Ram Shankar Katheria and the SP’s Jitendra Dohrey.
The Kanshi Ram-Mulayam bonhomie lasted beyond 1991 with MSY, whose home district was Etawah, heeding the BSP leader’s advice to float the Samajwadi Party in 1992. The SP and the BSP allied for the 1993 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls and defeated the BJP.
Khadim Abbas, who was Kanshi Ram’s polling agent in the 1991 election, remembers how Mulayam Singh Yadav ensured the defeat of Ram Singh Shakya, the candidate of the Samajwadi Janata Party (SJP), with which Mulayam was associated then, to facilitate an easy path for Kanshi Ram.
“Kanshi Ram got 1.45 lakh votes. This victory brought the two leaders extremely close. Mulayam Singh Yadav, on the advice of Kanshi Ram, launched his own party in 1992,” he said.
“Yadav’s astute political acumen enabled him to envision the future trajectory of social justice in U.P. politics to offset the BJP’s Hindutva line,” he added.
In fact, Etawah has not been a stronghold of any single party. The Congress has won this seat four times, the last time in 1984. The Samajwadi Party has won it four times in 1996, 1999, 2004 and 2009. The BJP won it in 1998 for the first time with Sukhda Mishra and then again in 2014 and 2019.
The BSP’s 2024 candidate Sarika Singh comes from a political family and her husband is an OBC leader.
“By fielding Sarika Singh, the BSP is eyeing both Dalit and OBC votes on a reserved seat,” said Subhash Tripathi, a political observer.
The SP candidate Jitendra Dohrey is a Dalit and former BSP district president in a constituency with 27% Dalit voters. The Dohreys are the biggest bloc among the Dalit voters in the constituency. Jitendra’s Pavitra Dohrey is chairperson of Maherva panchayat, which consists of 91 gram panchayats.
Etawah witnessed its first poll as a Lok Sabha constituency in 1957 when socialist leader Arjun Singh Bhadauria won against the Congress. He lost the next election but was elected again in 1967 and 1977.
In 2019, the SP lost the seat when it was in alliance with BSP by over 1 lakh votes though it polled nearly 45% votes.
This time, it expects the PDA (Pichda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) formula to keep it in striking distance of a win.
In the 2022 assembly polls, the BJP won the Secundara assembly seat in Kanpur Dehat, besides Auraiya Sadar and Etawah Sadar. All of these segments are part of the Etawah Lok Sabha seat.
In the ongoing election campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has addressed a rally in Etawah and so has Union home minister Amit Shah. Yogi Adityanath has held multiple rallies with Keshav Prasad Maurya to keep the party’s winning formula of the upper castes and Dalit communities intact.
Etawah votes in the fourth phase on May 13.