The Second Coming

Maya's edge

Mayawati will lose ground but return to power while SP and Congress will gain at BJP's expense. An exclusive TSI-CVoter survey  ahead of next year's UP polls

There is a good chance of Mayawati returning as Chief Minister, albeit with a reduced majority, when the state goes to polls in the proposed mid-2012 UP state assembly elections, according to an exclusive and wide ranging survey conducted by The Sunday Indian-C Voter, findings of which are published here.

According to the survey's projection, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is poised to emerge as the single largest party with 155 seats, the Samajwadi Party (SP) is second with 128 assembly seats, a surprising 67 seats go to the Congress while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lies at the bottom of the heap, reduced to 29 assembly seats.

The Congress and the SP receive substantial vote swings in their favour: 45 per cent swing for the Congress and 31 per cent for the SP. The BSP faces a minus 51 per cent swing against it while the BJP is virtually decimated, up against a 22 per cent vote swing deficit.

The survey predicts some clear trends:

• Congress will make a big dent in BJP's upper caste vote bank
• Dalits remain firmly behind Mayawati, and Rahul Gandhi's efforts to woo that critical constituency in the state may not yield the desired results
• Kurmis are split between the Congress and SP, Yadavs continue to back Mulayam Singh Yadav, Jats are with Ajit Singh and Lodhs continue to support Kalyan Singh
• In comparison to the 2007 state assembly elections, the BSP has lost a substantial chunk of Brahmin votes

• The Other Backward Castes (OBCs) will, by and large, constitute the backbone of the SP

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  Congress is expected to make good gains among the Muslims, while SP will be getting back some of its minority votes with leader Azam Khan back in its kitty

  The survey details as well as reports from the ground suggest that in the eventuality of a reduced majority for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) – even though it would continue to remain the single-largest party in Uttar Pradesh – the Congress may move in to provide outside support to form a government.

India's grand old party, which till 1989 held sway in this most politically crucial of states before being blown away by a combination of caste and communal factors, is tipped to improve its tally in the UP assembly elections and later in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The UP elections are considered important for the fortunes of party MP and general secretary Rahul Gandhi. The youthful general secretary, who is widely speculated to head the next Congress-led government, should his efforts in Uttar Pradesh bear fruit, is going to be tested against Mayawati and her party.

If, as the TSI-C Voter poll suggested, the Congress does increase its numbers at the hustings, it would constitute a definite shot in the arm for Rahul to aim for higher glories.

The survey was conducted among a representative sample of 12,223 randomly-selected respondents with the help of Computer Assisted Telephonic Interviews (CATI) across UP between January 1 to March 31, 2011. The data is based on the 2001 census, the margin of error in the results is plus or minus 3 per cent.

According to the survey, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress are on an upswing, while the BJP is on a downswing, a pale imitation of its Ayodhya Movement days back in the early 1990s. Significantly, the survey points out that the Congress may replace BJP as third largest party in the state. The saffron party has hit an all time low, its leadership in the state in total disarray.

With BJP out of the race, the survey said, there is a good chance that the crucial 19 per cent Muslims will vote tactically. However, a sizeable number of Muslim voters are expected to come back to Mulayam Singh Yadav, specially after Azam Khan's homecoming. The SP-Congress coalition is seen as the best alternative by Muslims.
The survey also stated that the reaction to the Mayawati's regime is paradoxical. On one hand, her traditional support base of Dalits is strongly behind her; on the other, the urban middle class and Brahmins are now out of the BSP's reach.

A lot of this middle class angst is being attributed to the BSP's pro-mafia image during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. It won the 2007 assembly polls, primarily on an anti-criminal plank – an euphemism for SP-styled politics. It, however, diluted this plank during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

The survey suggested that the Chief Minister Mayawati's 'self-obsessive' portrayal, her parks, statues and memorials are doing no good to her electoral fortune, which also explains the slide in BSP's overall projected numbers.   

The TSI-C Voter survey said that even though post 2009, Rahul Gandhi could have been justifiably hopeful of the Congress making large significant gains – even perhaps, emerge as the single-largest party in the state – it has subsequently lost that plot. Nonetheless, the party is certain to push the BJP to the fourth place in the state.

Even as an anti-corruption movement appears to be gathering steam in the national capital, the survey found corruption as an issue is no longer a vote catcher. People have tried everyone, and found everyone equally corrupt. So, we can expect anti-incumbency working overtime at micro-level.

Carving smaller states out of a large, unwieldy UP has the potential to be a match winner in the assembly elections.

The survey said if the Congress and BJP could raise the pitch in support of Poorvanchal, Bundelkhand, Awadh and Rohilkhand, it could pose a challenge to the dominance of BSP and SP.

According to it, people feel that smaller states can become a reality only if it has the backing of the centre and this is where Congress and BJP have a role to play.
Also, going by the history in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand, politics is eventually polarised between the two national parties, the survey said.

On the sensitive issue of control over corruption in administration, a surprising 39 per cent of the respondents thought the situation had improved while 46 per cent thought it had gone from bad to worse. On crucial indicators like water and irrigation, a sizeable 39 per cent felt they had improved, pipped by 41 per cent who held the opposite view.

Mayawati scores top points in securing the approval of a whopping 80 per cent of voters who believe that her government has improved communal and caste harmony as against 22 per cent who say things have deteriorated.

On the key parameter of who the respondents wanted as the next chief minister, 28.2 per cent voted in favour of Mayawati, 20.8 per cent backed Mulayam Singh Yadav, 8.7 supported Kalyan Singh, 6.8 per cent pitched in for BJP leader Rajnath Singh while 3.9 per cent respondents said Congress leader Salman Khurshid would be the ideal chief minister.

Law and order, always a touchy debate in Uttar Pradesh, drew an even response: 38 per cent felt that things were looking up while 30 per cent said they were not. Unsurprisingly, 47 per cent of those who were asked said they were not satisfied with their sitting MLA, while a sizeable 36 per cent in UP said they were.

On Mayawati's own record on certain key parameters, the record remains mixed. An overwhelming 76.3 per cent respondents said that the UP government had been unable to control inflation while a measly 8.8 per cent said prices were brought down.

Interestingly, on the question whether Congress could gain some of its lost ground in Uttar Pradesh, 35.9 per cent answered in the affirmative, while 38.8 per cent replied in negative.

When asked what they thought was Mayawati's single biggest achievement during her present tenure, 31.1 per cent said it was Dalit upliftment, 20.7 per cent put it down to her ability to keep government employees happy while another 20.3 said the BSP government had cracked down on organised crime.