Elections 2019: In UP, parties try to shore up their flanks before phase 2

The principal players are trying to fine tune their complex and complicated caste equations to ensure victory

Dharmendra Soni, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) coordinator of the Aligarh region, was supremely confident that the BSP’s alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) would be more “productive” and “enduring” in 2019 than it was in 1993, when the BSP’s founder-president Kanshi Ram linked up with the SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav to jointly fight the assembly election and defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).  The raison d’etre was identical but Soni believed that the essence was not the same.

“The foundation of the earlier understanding was shaky, there was mutual distrust. Dalits regarded the SP’s Yadavs as land-grabbers