UP Assembly polls 2017: Yadav family feud brings cheer to BJP supporters

 

Unlike previous elections, Shivpal Yadav didn’t campaign for other Samajwadi Party (SP), candidates, as his confidantes and sitting legislators were denied party tickets by the Akhilesh Yadav camp. Shivpal Yadav’s supporters call his fight with the Akhilesh camp, dharma yudh, a battle to prove who is the righteous inheritor of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s legacy.

 

By the evidence of his public rally on Thursday, Akhilesh Yadav has fervent support among the youth and several older people who also turned up but didn’t look enthused. The family feud is marking a generational shift at the ground level as well, giving an opportunity to those earlier eclipsed by Shivpal Yadav’s coterie to shine. On this list is SP’s young candidate in Etawah, Kuldip Gupta ‘Santu’. “Akhilesh bhaiyya is the future,” says Gupta, as supporters hint how their leader could be the prime minister in 2019.

 

In Etawah, the family feud is being cheered from the sides by other castes, particularly Brahmins. The antipathy to the clan among the region’s upper castes is visceral here, and symptomatic of why upper castes and some of the backward castes across UP have thrown their lot with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

 

“Ahirs don’t know how to have a civilised conversation, and look how they have allowed Muslims to slaughter animals anywhere in the city. It’s jungle raj,” says Shuklaji, the manager of Jai Palace Hotel in Etawah town. He believes the UP Assembly will become “a Pakistan” if all the Muslims fielded by SP-Congress alliance were to win. An election observer staying at the hotel rants about how caste quotas have destroyed the state, and only a BJP government can fix things. Congress leaders, mostly Brahmins, are also uncomfortable at their party leadership making them share space with Yadavs.

 

But the two rival Yadav camps are relentless in the pursuit of their new- found animosity. Threats are issued daily and openly from both sides. Those purportedly associated with Shivpal Yadav have floated a forum of dissenters, called Mulayam ke log, or Mulayam’s people. Their agenda is to ensure the defeat of official SP candidates of the Akhilesh camp. “We are hurt at the treatment meted out to Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav),” says Sunil Yadav, former district president of the SP. He claims at 400 workers are with him.

 

The Akhilesh camp alleges how a set of contractors, close to Shivpal Yadav and who benefited with government contracts during SP’s rule in the state, are now campaigning to defeat party candidates. “They are calling up people at night and threatening. Mark my words, this will not be forgotten,” Akhilesh Yadav said at the public rally. His uncle, Ram Gopal Yadav, asked supporters to send him photographs of those campaigning against the party. “We will fix them,” he said. Short of fisticuffs, the fight between the two camps is ugly, and dispels any notion that the family feud was a charade.

 

The infighting might have burnished Akhilesh Yadav’s image, but it could also hurt the party across a dozen seats in ‘Yadav-land’, comprising Etawah, Auryaiya, Kannauj, Mainpuri and adjoining areas, which the family carved out among itself. In this region, over two dozen Yadav family members have a stranglehold on all important elected positions — from being members of Parliament, to key ministries in Lucknow and heading urban local bodies and panchayats.

 

If Shivpal Yadav is hoping to teach his nephew a lesson, Akhilesh Yadav is aiming at the support from youth, the middle-aged and women. In all of this, Mulayam Singh Yadav is seldom mentioned by other party leaders in their speeches. Conventional wisdom is that the leader has lost his bearings in his old age.

 

Meanwhile, the BJP, which had won the Etawah Lok Sabha seat in 2014, is hurting because of the perceived non-performance of its MP, something Akhilesh Yadav brings up in his speeches. Demonetisation is another factor hindering the BJP’s efforts at an upper caste and non-Yadav OBC alliance. Those who suffered most are small traders and shopkeepers and daily wagers, and they are yet to forget the ‘pain’, particularly since the PM, or they complain, didn’t deliver them the promised ‘gains’, nor were any big fish arrested.