SP-BSP honeymoon over as Mayawati hints at dumping ‘mahagathbandhan’

BSP likely to fight coming UP bypolls on 11 seats independently

In the wake of confronting a virtual defeat in the 2019 Lok Sabha surveys because of the decision Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati on Monday alluded to dumping the ‘mahagathbandhan’ (terrific collusion) including BSP and the Samajwadi Party.

The collusion was declared on January 12, 2019, in the keep running up to the general decisions and was touted as an imposing challenger to counter the romping race hardware of BJP in UP, which chooses 80 Lok Sabha individuals, and is critical to government arrangement at the Center. In the scenery of BSP’s terrible execution in UP, Mayawati today gathered a gathering of senior gathering functionaries in Delhi to talk about the components behind the defeat. Mayawati, at the gathering, saw that the terrific union had neglected to convey for the BSP, since the union accomplices had neglected to guarantee an exchange of their separate vote banks, even as she admonished party pioneers to electrify units for challenging the forthcoming races autonomously without falling back upon any coalition.

As indicated by sources, she underlined that SP president Akhilesh Yadav couldn’t encourage the triumph of his significant other Dimple Yadav from the gathering’s turf of Kannauj, where she was vanquished by BJP chosen one Subrat Pathak by an edge of more than 12,000 votes, in spite of the Congress not handling its applicant in her help.

She also noted that Akhilesh had failed to prevent the division of Yadav votes. She alleged that Akhilesh’s estranged uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav, who had floated Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party Lohia (PSPL), had managed to transfer Yadav votes to the BJP and thus hurt the grand alliance in the state. Under the alliance, BSP and SP had fought 38 and 37 seats, respectively, in UP, while leaving 2 and 3 seats for Congress (Rae Bareli and Amethi) and ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), respectively..

Pihani, a cluster of villages near Lucknow, illustrates why the state has not developed

Pihani, Uttar Pradesh: For 16 years, Kailash Rai (not his real name), 49, has been commuting six hours every working day between his home in the state capital Lucknow and the government degree college where he teaches in Pihani, 135 km to the northwest.

A political-science lecturer, Rai cannot move with his family to Pihani, a cluster of over 100 villages (called a kasba) in Hardoi district, with less than 40,000 families as per Census 2011. When he started working there in 2000, it lacked the basic public facilities–regular power supply, good roads, public transport and good medical services.

Pihani remains an economic backwater. In the ongoing assembly elections, UP’s incumbent and contesting politicians are still promising the basic facilities they did 16 years ago: Electricity, buses and jobs, along with laptops and free data for poor youth.

UP ELECTION 2017 | story parallels that of Pihani. The kasba’s population of 206,743 is serviced by four colleges–a government degree college, a state-run industrial training institute (ITI) and two private degree colleges–more than the Indian average of 27 colleges per 100,000 youth in the 18-23 age group, according to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2014-15. But it has been unable to produce talent to run local educational institutions, banks and medical centres.

 has the highest number of colleges in any Indian state (6,026), according to AISHE 2014-15, but it has been unable to produce qualified workforce to drive development, as India Spend reported on February 11, 2017.

UP is India’s most populous and youngest state–its median age is 23–and the flaws in its development model typified by Pihani explain why its towns and village clusters (blocks with a population of less than 250,000 in 2011) cannot cope with the aspirations of its people, especially with regard to education and employment.

Pihani’s dropout rate of 36% at elementary school level exceeds UP’s overall rate of 21%. Like other village clusters in the state, connections to bigger cities are limited because there are few railway links, hardly any feeder roads to highways or efficient public transport services. Less than half the houses in the villages have electricity.

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UP polls: A popularity test for GeNext scions

Leading the brigade is Rajnath's son who has been fielded from Noida in place of sitting BJP MLA

UP Elections 2017 will not just be a fight for power, it will also be for inheriting political legacy by the new generation of several leaders cutting across party lines.

If the scions of Samajwadi Party and Congress -- Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi -- have come together for claiming power through an alliance in the most populous state, there are also sons and daughters of several political big wigs who will be making an electoral splash this time.

Interestingly, many of these debutants also have solid academic backgrounds and have quit promising careers to either pursue family traditions or their heart's call.

Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi's suggestion to senior leaders not to press for tickets for their kin, Bharatiya Janata Party has given nomination to a fair number of new faces having more established names to take up the contest for government formation in UP.

Leading the "son rise" brigade of the saffron party is UP BJP general secretary Pankaj Singh, son of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh who has been fielded from Noida in place of sitting BJP MLA Bimla Batham.

Pankaj (38), an MBA from Amity University, has been active in politics since 2002 and had been in ticket contention since 2007 Assembly election when he was almost set to make his debut from Chandauli, the home town of Rajnath.

He has for company Rajasthan Governor and former UP CM Kalyan Singh's grandson Sandeep Singh from the traditional family seat - Atrauli.

Sandeep is a post-graduate from the University of Leeds in England.

BJP MP Hukum Singh's daughter Mriganka, who runs private schools, has been given party ticket from Kairana.

The saffron party has also repeated its sitting MLA from Lucknow (East) Ashutosh Tandon 'Gopalji', the businessman son of senior party leader Lalji Tandon.

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UP polls 2017: Mulayam backs Akhilesh, to campaign for SP-Cong alliance

UP Elections 2017 | Rebuffing all rumours of feuds within the Samajwadi Party as well as his family, party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav on Monday said his son Akhilesh Yadav will be the next chief minister of Uttar Pradesh if his party wins the state assembly elections.

"Akhilesh Yadav will be the next Chief Minister. There are no differences in the family. I will start campaigning from tomorrow. Amar Singh is not upset. There is no difference. Akhilesh was given full freedom to work," Mulayam said.

The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister further said that he will campaign for Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance.

Earlier, Mulayam had told media that he would campaign for his younger brother Shivpal Yadav first.

After that, he would go to seek votes for the candidates named by his son and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

"Shivpal is not miffed...no one is upset. How can Shivpal make new party without talking to me?" he said.

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UP polls 2017: Survey shows BJP leads, but 40% voters still undecided

Overall, 28% of those surveyed said they would vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing BJP's Parivartan Rally in Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh. Photo: PTI

Elections for the Uttar Pradesh state assembly, India’s largest state with more voters–138 million–than the population of the north American country of Mexico, start on February 11, 2017, but 40% of its voters said they still don’t know which political party they will vote for, according to a new survey conducted by by FourthLion Technologies, a data analytics and public opinion polling firm, for IndiaSpend.

The firm conducted 2,513 telephone interviews in Hindi of registered voters in Uttar Pradesh, and said their sample is representative of UP’s urban and rural voters as well as socioeconomic, age, gender and caste make-up. The survey was conducted between January 24 and January 31, 2017.

The first article on the survey analysed issues that voters said were important to them.

Overall, 28% of those surveyed said they would vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party that heads the central government, if the polls were held immediately, while 18% of those surveyed would vote for the Samajwadi Party (SP) that currently leads the state, 4% would vote for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Mayawati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh between 2007 and 2012, while 1% would vote for the Indian National Congress (INC).
The FourthLion-IndiaSpend survey asked voters about the the four parties that won the most seats in the last state and parliamentary elections. The survey did not measure how many seats a party would win, and only suggests popular support for different political parties. It cannot be interpreted as indicative of election results.|READ MORE.