Thank you dear subscribers, we are overwhelmed with your response.
Your Turn is a unique section from ThePrint featuring points of view from its subscribers. If you are a subscriber, have a point of view, please send it to us. If not, do subscribe here: https://theprint.in/subscribe/
Sultanpur is two two-hour drive from Lucknow and the famous phrase ‘Road to Delhi goes through Lucknow’ in politics stands vindicated with respect to 2024 Lok Sabha poll results. Since past decade, the constituency had seen Gandhi family run the parliamentary affairs wherein Varun Gandhi represented the city in Lok Sabha from 2014-2019, while her mother Maneka Gandhi from 2019-2024.
Though Sultanpur hasn’t been a cakewalk for Maneka Gandhi since 2019, when she first won the constituency by a narrow margin of 13,263 votes, it is the caste arithmetic which has perturbed her the most. In an internal survey of the BJP ahead of 2019 General election, it was clear that sitting BJP MP Varun Gandhi would lose the seat due to anti-incumbency and SP-BSP forging an alliance. He was replaced by his mother Maneka who faced the heat in a tight fought election but managed to cut through it.
Sultanpur constituency has about 2.5 lakh Nishad voters, predominantly known as Mallahs while it comprises 17% minority population. For 2024 polls, former Chief Minister SP’s Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi-led Congress’ brainchild PDA ((Pichhda, Dalit and Alpsankhyak) formula, to take along the Dalits, non-Yadav OBCs alongside the famous ‘MY’ (Muslim-Yadav) combination turned out to be a masterstroke which trumped the BJP not even in Sultanpur but nearby Faizabad constituency, in which Ayodhya falls.
Samajwadi Party, in its experiment to field SC candidate on general seat of Faizabad yielded result where SP’s Awadhesh Prasad, who comes from Pasi community, defeated two-time BJP MP Lallu Singh by a margin of 54,567 votes.
Development Pitch
In Sultanpur, the city saw a systemic development of infrastructure and better transport facility, wider roads and more importantly, the availability of public representative. Maneka Gandhi would travel twice every month from Delhi to Sultanpur to resolve the public grievances and visit the constituency to check upon the work progress which were being assigned.
As per multiple anecdotal evidence, citizens would praise Maneka for her on the spot resolution tactic via the bureaucratic channels.
Maneka would call up the concerned department, talk to the officers and would make sure that if the issue brought to her is genuine, she would get it done. It was a way to nurture the constituency and win the trust of people, who already had apprehension of “outsider neta”. During the campaigning for 2024 polls, Maneka didn’t utilize the Ram Temple mileage to boost her chances rather focused on the five-year work done for the people of the district and believed that it would be enough to cross the line.
Sultanpur, where the road expansion, installation of new electric poles, redevelopment of divider and footpath on road alongside various tree and sapling plantation and a complete halt on butcher activity made the city a newer version of itself. Apart from getting the schemes of central and state governments implemented on ground, Maneka Gandhi ensured that the city gets other amenities like major trains getting halt at Sultanpur railway station and Sultanpur Medical College being constructed.
Caste Ruled Over
With caste being a contributing factor in 2024 polls, the Uttar Pradesh led the way for INDIA bloc to have a say over dominant BJP. Samajwadi Party shredded its M-Y (Muslim Yadav) tag and out of its 37 winning MPs, 20 came from the Other Backward Class (OBCs), eight from the Scheduled Caste (SC), four are Muslims, two belong to the Thakur community, while one each from the Brahmin, Vaishya and Bhumihar.
In Sultanpur, Rambhual Nishad who comes from the OBC community, gained the advantage of a section of Dalit voters and nearly entire Muslim community backing him against Maneka Gandhi. The wave in Sultanpur wasn’t against incumbent Maneka rather to make BJP learn a lesson. Since, Samajwadi Party has never won the Sultanpur Lok Sabha constituency in the past it was a tough battle to conquer.
Even in 2019, when the SP-BSP made an alliance, their vote share remained at 44.45% and BJP won with a narrow share of 45.91% in Sultanpur. And Maneka Gandhi became the first women MP from Sultanpur. The real issue lied in the transfer of vote while forging alliance, wherein traditional Congress votes got transferred to the SP and BSP fielding Udraj Verma, a Kurmi (OBC) who received around 16% vote or 1,63,025 votes played a spoilsport for Maneka-led BJP to fancy its chances.
In several anecdotes, though Muslim voters praised the work done by Maneka Gandhi in Sultanpur in the past five years but they relied upon the greater objective to defeat the BJP’s double engine claim. Interestingly, none of the leader has ever won the Sultanpur constituency twice except for Devendra Bahadur (1996 & 1998).
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.