NEW DELHI: A possible high decibel level elections in Bihar later this month and key byelections in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh around the same time appear to have nudged the UP government to climb down from its apparent belligerence in the Hathras rape-and-murder case.
With the incident grabbing headlines in the media, dominating discourse on social media, and protests threatening to go out of hand, the UP government changed tack on Saturday, ordering a CBI probe, allowing Congress leaders Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi to visit Hathras and top state officials meeting the victim’s family to give them a patient hearing.
Just two days back Rahul and Priyanka were stopped from visiting the victim’s family while on Friday, a Trinamool Congress delegation was given rough treatment with MP Derek O’Brien even apparently pushed to the ground when he and his team tried to force their way to Hathras. The BJP leadership also seems to have been unnerved by uneasy voices within.
What had been spoken with much circumspection among a section of leaders was put forth bluntly by Uma Bharti, who said the “image of the party and the UP government have been dented by the Hathras incident.” Lok Sabha MPs Manoj Tiwary and Parvesh Verma also came out against the “police high-handedness.”
The Hathras victim belonged to the Dalit community and the BJP, lacking a credible Dalit face in its ranks, has been trying to build bridges with the community and the Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs) on the appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In Bihar, Dalits constitute almost 16% of the vote base. Along with EBCs and other backward classes they account for 56% of the total population. While 38 of the 243 assembly seats are reserved for the Scheduled Caste, the SC-EBC-OBC bloc is dominant in 45% of the total seats.
The BJP has been making steady inroads among the Dalits. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, its party candidate Chhedi Paswan even trounced Congress veteran and former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar from the Sasaram constituency. According to the BJP’s internal assessment, it is eating into the support base of the BSP in adjoining districts of eastern UP.
Given caste dynamics in Bihar, BJP had to go into damage control mode
The BJP has been accounting for one-third of the Mahadalit votes since 2014 due to the Modi factor, a BJP functionary said. Given the caste dynamics in Bihar, the BJP had no option but to go into damage control mode on the Hathras issue.
“The outcome of the Jharkhand elections showed that the Modi factor and successful central schemes are losing their vote-catching ability in state polls. With incidents like Hathras hogging the limelight, the BJP cannot lose its new-found base.
Our government in Lucknow must not be adversely seen by the community,” a BJP functionary in Patna said. In the 28 seats heading for bypolls in MP, which will decide the fate of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, nine are SC constituencies.
Given that Dalits support the Congress in Gwalior, the BJP has a tough task in hand. In UP, a few of the seven seats where bypolls will be held fall in the western part of the state where Dalits are 22-30% of the population. So the negative fallout from Hathras can only be damaging for the saffron party.