Non-Yadav backward castes in East UP demand larger share of reservation pie

In 2014 and 2017, the BJP swept eastern UP with the help of the disempowered backward castes. In 2019, it could lose their support on the reservation issue

At the Congress’s office in Saidpur, 30 km to the east of Varanasi, one has to look long and hard for mug shots of the Gandhis because a trio of other icons have gained precedence. One wall of the decrepit structure is dominated by the portraits of BR Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule and Babu Jagdev Prasad Kushwaha. Ambedkar and Phule are enshrined in the pantheon of Dalit idols, but who was Kushwaha, whose surname sake, Ajit Pratap Kushwaha, is the Congress’s candidate from Ghazipur?

To the oppressed classes of east Uttar Pradesh, Babu Kushwaha was “Bharat ke Lenin” (India’s Lenin) because he