By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net
Akhilesh Yadav, national president of Samajwadi Party and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, has decided to field Praveen Kumar Nishad, the son of Nishad Party’s president Sanjay Nishad, from Gorakhpur in upcoming by-polls.
Holding a press conference on Sunday afternoon, Akhilesh Yadav also announced a coalition with the Nishad Party and Peace Party. Both these parties have substantial influence over the politics of eastern Uttar Pradesh.
Holding a rally in Varanasi couple of weeks back, Akhilesh Yadav made the intent clear that for the upcoming elections, Samajwadi Party will shake hands with smaller groups of Uttar Pradesh in order to defeat Bharatiya Janata Party.
Praveen Nishad will contest from Gorakhpur under the symbol of Samajwadi Party. At the press conference held on Sunday, Sanjay Nishad said, “Muslims and Nishads have a similar kind of diseases, so the cure to those should also be similar.”
Gorakhpur parliamentary seat, along with Phoolpur, became vacant during last year when Yogi Adityanath and Keshav Prasad Maurya resigned from their respective constituencies to take positions in the state government.
The Samajwadi Party has not announced its candidate from Phoolpur yet, but by fielding and backing Nishad Party from Gorakhpur, Akhilesh has given thought to the election equation in the region.
Earlier in 2004, Samajwadi Party fielded Jamuna Nishad from Gorakhpur who gave a tough fight to Yogi Adityanath in the election. Yogi Adityanath won the same election by a mere margin of 5,000 votes.
Nishad community, especially in Gorakhpur region, has been critical of Yogi Adityanath. Recently, the community surrounded Gorakshanath temple claiming that it belonged to them.
Akhilesh Yadav lashed out at the current BJP government for spreading hatred in the state, and said, “We all know who was responsible for the recent riots happened in Kasganj district.”
NISHAD – acronym of Nirbal Indian Shoshit Humara Aam Dal – is a political set up which has always influenced voters coming from Other Backward Castes. Communities with the surname Kewat, Manjhi, Bind, Mallah and related others have a strong inclination towards the Nishad Party.
In 2014 elections, both Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party fielded candidates from Nishad community. While Rajmati Nishad, MP candidate of SP, gained 21.75% votes, BSP candidate Ram Bhual Nishad could only get 16.95% of the total vote share of the region.
Many experts are also willing to look at the possibility of candidate status of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). If BSP fields a Nishad candidate this time, the vote split will surface again. However, the time spent by BSP to announce to candidate seems unrealistic as Tuesday is the last day for the candidates to fill the nomination. Many speculate that BSP is not willing to announce the candidate to avoid division of votes.
Moreover, the candidates declared by BJP and Congress imply towards the same equation as that of 2014 elections. Both BJP and Congress have fielded upper-caste Brahmin candidates, almost neglecting Nishad and Muslim candidates of the region. Congress declared Surhita Chatterjee Karim, a nursing home owner in Gorakhpur, who also contested Mayor election in 2012 and managed to get more than 80,000 votes. Dr Karim is a well-known name in Gorakhpur, and Congress is seemingly eye on Brahmin as well as Muslim votes — which are abundant in several localities of the district — by fielding her.
However, many think that Congress has ditched the idea of ‘secular coalition’ with SP and other groups by fielding its own candidate. Samajwadi Party and Congress both landed in a coalition in 2017 state assembly elections in order to defeat BJP. The SP has openly called for an anti-BJP coalition, a call to which Congress apparently paid no heed.
Following the same line as that of Congress, BJP has fielded Upendra Dutt Shukla as their candidate from Gorakhpur. If sources to be believed, Yogi Adityanath wanted to have Yogi Kamalnath — the priest at Gorakshanath Temple –as the candidate, but BJP put pressure on the name of the someone from inside the party.
Seeing the development on every front, Manoj Kumar Singh, a Gorakhpur-based senior journalist said, “The equation is most likely to that of 2014. But there is not any ‘wave’ of that sort. So I believe that even if BJP wins the vote margin will be very less.”
Commenting on the absence of BSP, Singh said, “If BSP does not field any candidate, it will be a difficult decision for the voters of Schedule Castes. Because we have witnessed that whenever BSP has fallen off the ladder, the Dalit votes have shifted towards BJP making the equation more interesting.”