New Delhi: In the face of a possible disintegration of its OBC vote bank in the states of Bihar, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has gone into a huddle to formulate a counter-strategy to protect its support base among the community.
Speaking to the media at the launch of the party’s manifesto for this month’s Chhattisgarh elections, Union Home Minister and senior BJP leader Amit Shah said Friday that the party was never opposed to the idea of having a caste census, but would take a decision after consulting everyone on the matter.
The home minister’s statement is being seen as an attempt by the party to satisfy OBC voters in poll-bound states, even as growing demands for a caste census raises concerns of a possible impact on the party stronghold.
On Thursday, Shah and BJP president J.P. Nadda met several senior leaders of the party, from Haryana to Maharashtra, in New Delhi to take stock of the situation in states and formulate a strategy for the polls.
In Maharashtra, where it is sharing power with the Shiv Sena, the BJP is in a Catch 22 situation because of the burning issue of reservation for the Marathas and possible counter-mobilisation by the state’s OBC community.
In Bihar, chief minister Nitish Kumar’s caste survey report has put the BJP in a spot as it is likely to build pressure for a caste census nationally and lead to demands for enhancement of reservation quota. In power at the Centre, the BJP has ruled out a national caste census.
In Uttar Pradesh, another state ruled by the BJP, the rival Samajwadi Party (SP) is organising meetings of backward castes to win back the Dalits and OBCs from the BJP, while its alliance partners Apna Dal and Nishad party have advocated for a caste census to protect their OBC vote. The BJP’s loss in the Ghosi bypoll in September particularly highlighted its OBC fault-line.
In Ghosi, despite the entire UP cabinet campaigning for him, BJP’s OBC candidate Dara Singh Chauhan was defeated by SP’s Sudhakar Singh, a non-OBC.
Party sources who attended Shah’s meeting with senior leaders told ThePrint that the central leadership discussed in detail the counter-strategy to protect its OBC vote share, which is seen as crucial to winning the general elections.
They asked leaders “not to fall into the trap of the opposition’s push for a caste census and instead aggressively reach out to the backward caste groups”.
“They were also told to formulate smaller alliances with prominent OBC leaders in states or to induct such leaders into the party,” said a source, adding that the BJP has decided to form a committee for a larger OBC outreach in the coming days.
The party is particularly concerned, said the sources, about the three crucial states of Maharashtra, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where OBC politics has been taking shape and any wrong strategy could cost the BJP.
Over the past decade, the BJP has established its hold over caste-based politics by seeking to assimilate non-dominant OBC castes under the Hindutva umbrella. However, ahead of the 2024 polls, caste has again emerged as one of the primary sites of political contest in various states.
The BJP was the biggest beneficiary of OBC support in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Its vote from the community was just 22 percent in 2009 but doubled to 44 percent in 2019, according to Lokniti-CSDS National Election Studies data. Breaking the monopoly of dominant OBC castes, the party also gained power in UP (in 2017) and a better foothold in Bihar.
A BJP leader from UP who was present at Thursday’s meeting told ThePrint that the Lok Sabha election would be a challenge for the BJP if the party performed poorly in UP, which contributes 80 Lok Sabha seats.
“If the Congress and SP fight together (in UP), and if the BSP does not field candidates which suit the BJP’s interests, the election will be a challenge. While party leaders are arguing that CM Yogi Adityanath’s Hindutva credentials combined with a welfare push will be enough for the election, the Ghosi defeat has signalled that the party needs to protect its OBC vote bank,” the leader said.
Surendra Nagar, BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP, said the “larger focus of the meeting was to form a strategy for the Lok Sabha polls and to take stock of the situation in different states”.
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The Maharashtra imbroglio
The BJP is politically vulnerable in Maharashtra, struggling to maintain harmony between its fractious coalition allies — the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s rebel Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) faction — while also trying to keep its core OBC voter base intact.
The OBC community has been getting increasingly dissatisfied by the state government’s apparent olive branch to Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil who has been demanding Kunbi OBC caste certificates for the Marathas, which would qualify them for reservations.
The OBCs, which make up 52 percent of Maharashtra’s population, and which are a key BJP vote bank, are against reservations under this category for the Marathas. On the other side, the Marathas make up nearly 33 per cent of the state’s population, and any move perceived as neglecting their interests could also come at a heavy political cost.
Jarange Thursday ended an indefinite fast for the quota, warning of a bigger protest if the government did not take action on his demand by January. The OBCs have also warned of an agitation if the OBC certificate was given to Marathas.
A BJP functionary told ThePrint that, “Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis apprised the central leadership about the emerging situation in the state and the state government is fire-fighting to satisfy both groups”.
“Several leaders gave different suggestions for an OBC outreach but the high command told Fadnavis that the situation was sensitive and should be handled delicately. At the same time, the party should not get trapped. They said the BJP’s position should be reflected in its actions without going on the defensive,” said the functionary.
The Maharashtra BJP last month launched a two-week ‘Jagar Yatra’ to reach out to the OBCs in 11 districts of Vidarbha region, which used to be a Congress stronghold. The region has 10 of 48 Lok Sabha seats and 62 of 288 assembly seats and is crucial for the party.
The BJP has also been accused of marginalising its OBC leaders in Maharashtra, from Eknath Khadse to Pankaja Munde and Prakash Mehta, while the state leadership is dominated by Maratha leaders Pawar and Shinde, and a Brahmin, Fadnavis. This has created another fault-line.
The party does have an OBC leader as state president (Chandrashekhar Bawankule) but he’s not believed to have a pan-state appeal among the community.
The Bihar conundrum
At Thursday’s meeting, Bihar BJP leaders Samrat Choudhary, Vijay Sinha and Sushil Modi presented their feedback on the emerging situation in the state after the caste survey report, party sources said.
A Bihar BJP leader told ThePrint that the leadership also wanted to know about the preparation to win the state’s 40 Lok Sabha seats and the upcoming strategy.
Explaining the party’s strategy, a second senior leader said, “It was a Pranab Mukherjee committee which had rejected the counting of OBCs in the national census, and now the Congress, which lost its OBC vote bank, is trying to get the OBC pie by creating confusion among castes”.
“But the BJP does not need to fall into this trap and will stick to its existing plan of Hindutva, and the Modi government’s social welfare push, beside increasing representation of the OBC community in different power-sharing structures,” the leader added.
The Bihar BJP leader further explained that the “Centre has the option of using the report of the Rohini Commission (constituted for examining sub-categorisation of OBCs) for greater penetration among marginalised OBCs, but this can create another sort of counter-polarisation of dominant OBC castes against marginalised OBC castes”.
From Bihar to UP, the BJP gets votes from dominant OBC castes, particularly the Kurmis, and the commission’s report can disturb that equilibrium, the Bihar leader pointed out.
According to the leader, the BJP high command directed Bihar leaders to form a coalition against the Yadavs, who largely vote for the rival Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in the state.
“So, we are stitching an alliance to consolidate the Kurmis and Koeris to corner Nitish Kumar’s vote-bank (Kurmis) and weaken (RJD leader and Bihar deputy CM) Tejashwi Yadav’s,” said the leader.
“There has long been animosity among the Kurmi and Koeris and the Yadavs in Bihar and we have to use that fault-line,” said the leader.
Bihar BJP chief Samrat Choudhary said, “We discussed how we could win the Lok Sabha seats at the meeting”.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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