Last year's UP panchayat polls broke BJP's invincibility myth, 'not money, muscle power'

Bharat Dogra*
While elections in all States are important, state assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP) always have a special importance from a national perspective. So it is this time around too as the election scene in Uttar Pradesh is being followed very eagerly.
Generally BJP is depicted to be strong in this State, but let us check this against the results of the panchayat elections held last year in UP. While nobody is saying that similar results will be repeated in assembly elections as these are after all a different game, but surely some indication of grassroots support can be gathered from there.
Panchayat election systems can differ somewhat from State to State but generally these involve elections for rural decentralization institutions at three tiers -- village ( or cluster of smaller villages), block, district. For some posts at these level people vote directly to elect representatives. The real grassroot support is reflected in this component of direct elections.
For other senior posts it is these directly elected representatives who vote in a system of indirect election, with high possibility of manipulations. These panchayat elections are not officially fought on party lines, but party affiliations and support are clearly known and widely reported.
In the UP panchayat elections in 2021, spread over April-July, first the results of direct elections, more clearly reflecting the real inclinations of people, came in. These reflected a clear trend of the BJP trailing at a rather distant second position.
The BJP tried to hide its discomfort at these results by claiming several winning independents as its supporters, but this did not get much credibility. In particular several reports emphasized the very poor showing of the BJP in its strongholds like Ayodhya, Varanasi and Mathura.
In a report updated in the “Hindustan Times” on May 6, for instance, it was stated that in Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of PM Narendra Modi, out of 40 seats of zila (district) panchayat members, the BJP was at a rather distant second place and could win only 7.
In Mathura, the Lok Sabha constituency of a BJP star campaigner, the BJP was pushed to sharing even the second spot. In Ayodhya, another supposed big stronghold of the BJP, the BJP could win only 8 out of 40 seats, again getting only a distant second spot.

The BJP was pushed to the second spot in the directly contested elections despite the BJP candidates being generally much better placed in terms of resources and massive funds having been been poured in recent times into BJP strongholds like Varanasi, apart from the more general advantages of the BJP being the the ruling party .
A widely discussed analysis of these election results by a senior MP and political leader of the BJP found the BJP leading in only 67 out of 357 rural Assembly constituencies (urban constituencies were not covered in this analysis as these are not relevant in the context of rural panchayat elections).
This first phase of panchayat elections reflected the trends obtained by direct voting and hence are more relevant for knowing the public mood.
However, indirect voting was still to be held for the posts of block pramukhs ( second tier head-persons ) and zila panchayat adhyakshas or district panchayat presidents ( third- tier headpersons) in July. Due to the much smaller number of voters involved in these indirect elections, these were more prone to use of money power and muscle power, and these were won by the BJP. There were many news reports and videos of violence, intimidation, beatings and firing.
So the lessons of panchayat elections in UP last year appear to be that the ground-level support for the BJP has dwindled, but at the same time the BJP has greatly increased its capacity for post election manipulation, and this has to be guarded against.
---
*Honorary convener, Campaign to Save the Earth Now; recent books: “Protecting Earth for Children” and “Planet in Peril”

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Counterview

Search This Blog