Delhi Assembly elections: Data drift holds cues

Predicting poll outcomes by all accounts is a perilous job. Elections are analysed on past trends. Electorates have proven wiser than pundits more often. They aren't prisoners of the past, as they script history elections after elections. Amid the maddening electioneering, data stay firm with serenity, inviting political strategists to steer narratives to help their masters for smart politics. Data for Delhi suggest the air in the city smells of a cliffhanger of the poll outcome. 

THE ruling Aam Admi Party (AAP) had weaved a magical spell in 2015. Political rivals of the incumbent chief minister Arvind Kejriwal were left shell-shocked with the final scoreboard. That was 67-3 and a naught for the Congress. The BJP had the worst tally. The saffron outfit still bears the taunt. Climbing from an abyss like situation of the single digit figure five years ago to go past the half way mark of 35 would indeed be an unprecedented somersault. For AAP, it will equally be the groundswell of popular anger to slump from the level of 67 to 30s or less would be quite a fall with thud. 

The AAP isn't just another political outfit. The party was born after Anna Hazare made the political air of Delhi pregnant with negativism during 2012-13. Negativism midwifed anarchism. Kejriwal proved an undisputed icon of the politics of anarchism. His foes were left guilt-stricken, as they bent backwards to prove their credentials of honesty and probity in public life. They vowed to innovate and herald an honest and people friendly governance. The tribe of Sheila Dikshit, Harsh Vardhan and Kiran Bedi searched for wood when their boats had already sunk.   

The 2015 scoreboard read: AAP 54.3 per cent vote share and 67 Assembly seats; BJP 32.3 per cent vote share and 3 Assembly seats; and the Congress 9.7 per cent vote share and zero Assembly seats.

But that wasn't the maiden electoral venture of AAP in politics. Kejriwal cut off his umbilical chord with his godfather Anna Hazare to contest the December 2013 Assembly polls. The cadre of the AAP wasn't yet properly built. The party was still sloganeering. 

The 2013 scoreboard read: AAP 29.5 per cent vote share and 28 Assembly seats; BJP 33 per cent vote share and 31 Assembly seats; and the Congress 24.6 per cent vote share and eight Assembly seats.

In  span of a few months, Kejriwal built the cadre for AAP, with donations pouring from the affluent class within the country and abroad, helping him to maintain an army of well paid functionaries. With the likes of Kumar Vishwas, Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav leading the most vicious attacks on the mainstream political parties, Kejriwal strode as the alternative politics warrior, swearing to slay the rivals in the electoral battlefield. The Congress fell for the trap, and helped Kejriwal become chief minister. That bloated the persona of Kejriwal further, and soon he didn't need the Congress crutches. He read the politics well, and played the victim card to the hilt.

People flocked to Kejriwal, with 54.3 per cent vote share in 2015. His rivals turned into pygmies. The new political icon was born. But within a few months, drift set in the Kejriwal camp, as all those who bloated him into an extraordinary exponent of alternative politics parted ways after much breast-beating. 

TWO years later, the AAP faced the litmus test to repeat the magical spell of 2015. The BJP had been in power in the municipal corporation of Delhi for a decade, completing two full terms. The AAP cadre was mobilised to oust the BJP from the MCD, which, incidentally, has over 90 per cent connect with the people on a daily basis. The BJP was up against significant anti-incumbency. The BJP chief Amit Shah sought shelter in simple strategy; he just told the incumbent Councillors that they should climb the political ladder and focus on contesting the next Assembly elections. The BJP fielded fresh crop of the party workers.

The 2017 municipal elections' scoreboard read: AAP 26 per cent vote share and 49 seats; BJP 37 per cent vote share and 181 seats; and the Congress 21 per cent vote share and 31 seats.     

From 54.3 per cent vote share in 2015, AAP came down to 26 per cent; the BJP after staying firm with 33 per cent (2013) and 32.3 per cent (2015) rose to 37 per cent; and the Congress made a smart recovery from an embarrassing 9.7 per cent (2015) to 21 per cent. 

In 2017 again the AAP got another jolt. The outfit had found fertile ground in Punjab, and was seen on course to wrest power from Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-BJP combine. The Delhi drift had its own parallel in Punjab for AAP. The Congress' old horse Captain Amarinder Singh strode high to leave AAP huffing and puffing at distant second.             

PEOPLE undeniably have made distinctions between local and national elections. Chhatishgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand have shown that the electorate can with ease make distinct choices in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. In Odisha, the electorate cast votes simultaneously for Lok Sabha and Assembly polls, and showed preferences for Narendra Modi in New Delhi and Navin Patnaik in Bhubaneshwar.  

Still, the data are significant, for Delhi appears on a certain course. The BJP swept the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, with the perfect scoreboard of 7-0. The 2019 endorsed the previous scorecard, with scales going higher.

The 2014 scoreboard read: AAP 32.90 per cent vote share and zero seat; BJP 46.40 per cent vote share and seven Lok Sabha seats; and the Congress 15.10 per cent vote share and zero seat. 

The BJP had seen a negative swing of about 14 per cent in the 2015 Assembly elections. The AAP correspondingly registered over 21 per cent of positive swing, mostly gaining at the expense of the Congress. 

 The 2019 scoreboard read: AAP 18 per cent vote share and zero seat; BJP 56.58 per cent vote share and seven Lok Sabha seats; and the Congress 18 per cent vote share and zero seat.

For BJP, the scores in recent elections are 33 per cent (2013), 46.40 per cent (2014), 32.3 per cent (2015), 37 per cent (2017), 56.58 per cent (2019). In the five recent polls, the BJP hasn't gone down 32.3 per cent even when the party arguably shot in the foot by fielding an ex-cop Kiran Bedi in 2015. 

The AAP in contrast has seen wild swing of vote share from 18 per cent (2019) to 54.3 per cent in 2015. The graph is surely not steady. The AAP, in fact, came third in 2019. 

The 2015 elections in Delhi was a watershed moment. The BJP saw 14 per cent vote share knocked away in the face of the magical spell of AAP. Delhi was high on romance in 2015. The level of romance was two per cent higher in 2019, with adoration for a different entity. 

The BJP's worst case scenario could be another 14 per cent drift, which may leave the saffron outfit still with 42 per cent popular votes. To level, the AAP will need 24 per cent of the positive swing from 2019. And, that would surely be reckoned a daunting task.    

Delhi may throw a tantalizingly cliffhanger election outcome on February 11.

Citizenship Amendment Act: Flying embers in times of urban unrest

Students are swelling in numbers on the streets. They've braved chill in the air. Showers from water canons haven't doused the fire in the bellies of the protestors. Universities, mostly in metropolitan cities, are squirming with angst. Air smells of feverish emotions. The new decade dawned with loud shrieks from the youth, underlining their hatred for the ruling dispensation in India. That Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are no strangers to hatred is not forgotten by those with eyes and ears for the fast changing Indian democratic flavours.

INDIAN Parliament has been seized of the pressing needs for the amendments in the Citizenship Act for a few decades. The voice for amendments in the Parliament began gaining visible strength from 2003. Politicians cutting across party lies made sympathetic overtures for granting citizenship to thousands of refugees. Such refugees who fled neighbouring Islamic countries due to religious persecutions have been spread out in many cities for past three decades, while they continue to seek ways to come to India on the back of radical Islamist choosing them for their bigotry even in the recent times. The influx will not stop of such people even while the Citizenship Amendment Act draws the curtain of December 31, 2014 for them to gain Indian nationality. 

Deliberations in the Parliamentary standing committee of the Ministry of Home Affairs largely concurred that the refugees belonging to the majority community in Bangladesh cannot be considered for citizenship. Muslim refugees from Pakistan and Afghanistan aren't in any significant number to warrant attention. Muslims from Bangladesh, popularly called ghuspaithiya (illegal migrants), have, however, been in numbers to polarise election campaigns, with a few political parties vowing to throw them out of the country. Assam has seen riots in areas inhabited by them since 1980s. Assam was torn apart in the face of the swift demographic changes, posing an existential crisis to the Assamese identity.

Demographic changes, substantially altering linguistic and cultural identities of districts bordering West Bengal and Bihar with Bangladesh in the course of 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium, were swift. Waves of illegal migrants from Bangladesh mingled in Indian habitations unhindered and unquestioned. The military dictatorship in Bangladesh after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had co-opted the radical Islamist. The free flow of Saudi money to further the Wahabi stream of militant Islam found fertile grounds in Bangladesh. That the Parliamentary voices underlined security risk from such unabated flow of illegal Bangladeshi migrants indeed reflected the ground realities.

THE National Register for Citizens (NRC), committed in the Assam Accord and implemented under the watch of the Supreme Court, bared the religious fault lines. The cut off date for the people to make into the list was March 25, 1971. Over 19 lakhs were excluded from the final list for which over 3.31 crore people had applied. The BJP was livid, for the party leaders claimed that 12 lakh Bengali Hindus found their claim rejected. The BJP leaders fumed that over 90 per cent of the alleged Bangladeshi illegal migrants actually made into the final list. Predictably, the BJP government in Assam rejected the NRC held in Assam.

Indian Parliament exhaustively debated the draft legislation on the Citizenship Amendment Bill. The BJP also faced internal dissent in its Assam unit, with some expressing that there would be backlash if the Bengali Hindus are granted citizenship. The Central BJP leaders held firm and went ahead with clear intent that the Hindus in Assam would gain citizenship. The Bill excluded the Muslims from the ambit, while other minorities in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan -- Christians, Buddhists, Parsi, Jains and Sikhs -- made into the beneficiary list. Such refugees from Pakistan and Afghanistan are said to be just little over 30,000. The BJP leaders have guessed Bangladesh illegal Muslim migrants in excess of one crore (100 million).

"The Citizenship Amendment Act is meant principally for the Bengali Hindus in Assam," said a senior BJP leader in an informal chat with scribes.

THE BJP chief Amit Shah has rewritten the political script of Indian politics. In Narendra Modi, Shah had a campaigner to allow the BJP to overwhelm inimical political hindrances. Shah rejoices in politics of confrontation. In Parliament, his debates are essentially confined to winning the arguments, with facts and instances from the past, which are uncomfortable to the Opposition. In electoral politics, he demonstrated effortlessly that the age old might of the strategic Muslim voting was just rudderless. He scored the rare triple century for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, leaving opponents gripped with morbid fear of irrelevance.       

Shah was among the first few to occupy the chair in the forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan when Modi took oath for his second term. The men and women in the council of ministers largely consisted of the aids of Shah. It was apparent that Modi had chosen his second in command and possibly the heir. Shah proved soon that he was in a hurry. In a swift and sudden move, Shah wrote a new script for Jammu and Kashmir. He made it simple to disbelief of even his supporters that the Article 370 could just be wished away with a Parliamentary resolution. Shah endeared to the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS) with one bold stroke. To the delight of the RSS, he owned up the moral ownership of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, and grabbed a narrative for the next five years by becoming vocal on the NRC.    

In a matter of six months, it's not Modi but Shah who is being talked about in the country. With his alter ego Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India, accounting for one-sixth population of the country, the BJP-RSS brass know that the Hindutva would stay at the center stage of the popular discourse in the coming years.

Lok Sabha had passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill in 2018. The CPI (M) MP Mohammed Salim and AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi made the obvious noise. There were hardly any noteworthy protests on the streets of New Delhi. The Bill lapsed with the dissolution of the 16th Lok Sabha. The 17th Lok Sabha inaugurated with the BJP led government going in a tearing hurry to gain Parliamentary approvals to host of legislative bills, with government not shying away from pushing the contentious legislation. The NDA being in minority in Rajya Sabha proved no hindrance to Shah. From legislation against the practice of triple talaq (instant divorce) within the Muslim community to the dilution of Article 370, besides the Citizenship Amendment Act, flew with the Parliamentary favours with ease. The BJP under the watch of Shah in the government was seen possessed with the might to rewrite the Constitution o India by the opponents.    

The battle lost in Parliament and elections for long have been waged on the streets.

Rahul Gandhi makeover: Shine in Rahul's shadow

Bhukh hai to sabra kar, roti nahi to kya hua,

Aajkal Dilli mein hai zere bahas e mudda -- Dushyant Kumar.

CONGRESS vice president Rahul Gandhi suddenly discovered Dushyant Kumar. This claim may be in the realm of suspicion. More apt would be to say that Rahul began dishing out couplets of Dushyant Kumar from his book of Ghazal Saaye mein Dhoop. Rahul, who had been struggling to find a coherent narrative, began hitting headlines by borrowing from the pathos in couplets of Dushyant Kumar.

Dushyant Kumar is hailed as Mirza Ghalib of Hindi. He himself had been a self proclaimed admirer of Ghalib. He admits that he did not have even the hundredth of the talent of Ghalib. Yet, he notes that his pains are no less than that of Ghalib, which made the Urdu poet an immortal for those who feel their hearts beating.

"I don't believe that my pain is less than Ghalib's, or I felt them with lesser passion. It may be possible that each may have such false notion concerning his or her feelings. But history is testimony to all my pains," Dushyant Kumar writes in the introduction to "Saaye mein Dhoop". 

Dushyant Kumar had been a favourite for speakers in 80's and 90's, who sought to make an impact with their audiences. Sometimes, it did not matter whether the couplets of Dushyant Kumar related to the topic at hand. But, it had been fashionable to recall a few couplets with flair to convince the audiences of speaker's depth in literature. 

Kahan to tay tha chiragan harek ghar ke liye,

kahan chirag mayassar nahi shahar ke liye;

yahan darakhton ke saaye me dhoop lagati hai,

chalo yahan se chalen aur umra bhar ke liye.

Above couplets came out in all flair from a senior IPS officer in 90's, while speaking at an annual function of a local club. Dushyant Kumar's yearnings to run away from the pathos had no relevance with the topic of the evening. Yet, the couplets gave depth to his speech, with all clapping and admiration coming in plenty.

Rahul has dished out many other couplets from "Saaye mein Dhoop" with high stake Gujarat

Assembly elections playing out at a time when he's set on the path to take the baton from his mother Sonia Gandhi for the leadership of the party.  Indeed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the source of pathos for the couplets dished out by the Gandhi scion.

Within the BJP, Modi detractors have seemingly refreshed their memories of the lines of "Saaye mein Dhoop". Ab kisi ko bhi nazar aati nahi darar, ghar ki har deewar par chipke haen itne ishthaar came handy for Shatrughan Sinha when he sought to lash out at Modi and his "council of sycophants" while speaking in the company of Sitaram Yechury, Sharad Yadav, Ali Anwar, D Raja and others.  

THIS blogger, while mapping the political journey of Rahul, had previously termed him a submarine politician. That adrenaline shoots in his veins in the times of elections followed by long phase of hibernation in cooler chimes had indeed been Rahul's imprints on Indian politics. His arguably incoherent articulation of issues critical to a large number of people had been well documented. He once believed that escape velocity would be required for the people to break off from poverty; or, that power had been poison; or, the Indo-US nuclear deal had been critical to light the bulbs in the huts of Kalawati to ensure her daughters went to schools. His intellectual imprints on India's socio-political canvas have surely left fodder for analysis. 

Now that Rahul is diving into the Dushyant Kumar's treasure, it would indeed be key to find if he has begun connecting with the people. Himachal Pradesh is currently one of the few states being ruled by the Congress. Barring Karnataka and Punjab, the Congress could hardly count any other big states in its kitty. Thus, it must have been incumbent upon Rahul to defend Himachal Pradesh fiercely from the BJP chief Amit Shah, who is seeking a literal translation of Congress mukt Bharat.      

But the Gandhi scion could spare just one day to address three rallies in the hilly state where the octogenarian Veerbhadra Singh was left to fend with himself against the combined might of Modi-Shah, besides open rebellion from within the party ranks. 

Women in Kangra advising Rahul to work on his communication skills

On the campaign trail, this blogger sought out from the locals in the state if they missed Rahul at a time when they had to make the crucial decision to choose party/candidate to vote for. From Kangra to Palampur, from Hamirpur to Dharamshala, the common refrain was that the locals did not miss Rahul in their states. Some had suggestions for Rahul, that he should cease to be in a hurry to explain an issue. He should connect with the people; he seems to be in a great hurry; he's angry most of the times without explaining hos source of anger, opined a section of voters in Himachal Pradesh, which also included a few who hailed from the local Congress units.

"Rahul seems angry all the times. But we don't understand reasons for his anger. He should explain with little more leisure. He needs to improve his communication skills," Ritu Dadhwal (In pix) told this blogger in Jwalamukhi in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, 

Dushyant Kumar is a literary delight. His pathos survives. But Rahul may need to go beyond quoting from  "Saaye mein Dhoop".

Is genie back in bottle?

Euphoria over lapping Nitish Kumar in the saffron camp has a subtle hint of faultline in the great Narendra Modi script.

THE BJP chief Amit Shah idolizes India's greatest political strategist Chanakya and Hindu revivalist Veer Savarkar. Chanakya believed in a strong and rigorously trained army to expand frontiers of the kingdom and also to ward off foes. Savarkar envisioned homogenous Hindu society, and mostly undertook covert operations in pursuit of his goals. Shah believes that he's a blend of both the historical icons. 

Fired by his expansionist burst of adrenaline, Shah is eyeing to win Odisha and West Bengal. He even thinks that Kerala too will be in saffron kitty at not so distant time. The saffron flag is fluttering all across the North-east. Team Amit Shah is camping determined to uproot Manik Sircar government in Tripura. 

Yet, the saffron expansionist zeal was piped to give Nitish Kumar

lease of life to rule Bihar. Fresh from delivering morbid shock to rivals in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP seemingly acted as the henchmen of Bihar chief minister to help him shed the secular skins. From splashing documents of land deeds dating back to 1990s, Nitish's Sherpa and Bihar BJP's sole anchor Sushil Kumar Modi had been a man on a mission. Suddenly, he had all the revenue records to link Lalu Prasad clan in quid pro quo land deals.  One may wonder what the duo had been doing with the same set of records in their possession during NDA reign in the state during 2005-13.

Central investigating agencies, the CBI and ED, true to their wont of being more loyal than the king, hunted several locations to add thrill to the political drama. Lalu Prasad, convicted for corruption and barred from contesting election, was again certified corrupt along with all his clan members.           

Nitish Kumar and his Sherpa Sushil Kumar Modi delivered the alibi for another dramatic and thrilling swapping of places in the state politics. Kumar is a politician without a party as noted by the historian Ram Chandra Guha. And Sushil Kumar Modi has of late been a politician dumped by his party. Their umbilical cord helps both to remain relevant in the Bihar politics. 

That Nitish Kumar could have been a challenger to Narendra Modi had been proven a pipe dream in the course of political events after the 2014 verdict. That Modi with Kumar in saffron camp is running away with the 2019 poll is, thus, a convenient spin to a story palatable to the people. 

Despite being the deputy chief minister of Bihar for more than seven years, Sushil Kumar Modi had failed to win Amit Shah's approval to become chief ministerial face of the party in the 2015 state elections. Still, he slogged and logged highest number of manhours to stall the Mandal backlash. Shah, the Chankaya of BJP, schemed from the Chanakya hotel in Patna only to flounder and subsequently sink his party to the humiliating loss in the state. Only a year ago, the BJP had been unstoppable in Bihar, with the party led alliance winning 33 out of the total 40 Lok Sabha seats.

Sushil Kumar Modi had been slighted in the run up of the 2015 Bihar polls and thereafter, with team Amit Shah experimenting with new set of nondescript leaders to stage a comeback in the state. That Shah despite being on a whirlwind intensive tour of several states to deepen the foothold of the BJP failed to make his presence felt in Bihar in the last two years made it evident that he had not yet recovered from the 2015 drubbing.

With the BJP ship adrift on the high sea of Bihar, Sushil Kumar Modi had only to strike at the right time to take full control of the party in the state, and that could have been possible only if his aka, Nitish Kumar, was back on his side. 

The Bihar chief minister had teamed up with the BJP to put the genie of social justice in the bottle in 2005. Lalu Prasad, who has been the sole custodian of the politics of social justice in the state, hurtled to the wilderness in the next one decade. 

Time seemed to have been ripe for writing political obituary of the messiah of Mandal. But his nemesis only uncorked the bottle to

give him another day to live in 2013. Once out of the bottle, the king of "MY (Muslim-Yadav)" proved his mettle becoming the largest party after the 2015 verdict. Back in power with two sons -- Tej Pratap and Tejashwi Prasad, Lalu Prasad was remote controlling bureaucracy and gaining political strength each day. 

Time to put the genie back into the bottle had come again. And bottle was readied, but only the time will tell if the genie actually went inside. That saffron juggernaut prostrated before Nitish Kumar is indeed all to see at a time when Amit Shah is seen unstoppable.       

After statue, Maya's deity fancy

A week is a long time in politics. Harold Wilson's one line wisdom has stood test of time for decades. That the political commentators are swayed by events to make predictions are commentaries on fallacy of being forgetful of what Wilson had so succinctly surmised.  

Only a few weeks back the Mayawati led BSP was rattled. The prominent face of the party in Uttar Pradesh Swamy Prasad Mourya had quit. He was followed by two more in quick succession. They all went out by alleging Mayawati's penchant for "money for tickets". Mayawati was seen defensive and waiting to see how many more would bolt her stable. She was apparently faced with a script of sabotage from within her party even before she launched the campaign to wrest the power back in the next year's elections in the state.

Mayawati

The BJP dropped a rope to Mayawati to swing back from the zone of self-doubt to that where she could street-fight her battle for Lucknow. The vice president of the state unit of the BJP Dayashankar Singh had a momentary loss of sanity to believe a public place as his private abode to abuse Mayawati. He succumbed to profanity. The Rajya Sabha was rocked. Leader of the House Arun Jaitely apologised. The BJP sacked Dayashankar Singh. He went into hiding, as the Akhilesh Yadav government went after him with full might.

The cadre of the BSP came on the street. The party battered in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections found the veins swelling with energy. The blue flag embossed with image of an elephant spurted on Lucknow streets. The verdict in New Delhi was out, that the BJP had handed the seat of power in Lucknow to Mayawati on a platter. The verdict was not misplaced either, for the BJP chief Amit Shah had been feasting and bathing with Dalits to win them over in the run up to the UP elections. The BJP story seemed over in UP. 

Dalits were bashed up in faraway Gujrat as well. They were flogged allegedly for skinning dead cows. The cow vigilantes have mushroomed north of Vidhyanchal strongly. The Narendra Modi government's ministry of agriculture and farmer welfare has rolled out ambitious plans for protection of cows. But the cow-worshipers choose not to remember that a few Dalits eke out their livings out of the skins of dead bovines. And, thus, the plan of feasting and bathing with Dalits by Amit Shah met with its anti-thesis in Una in Gujrat. The story which began with the suicide of Rohith Vemula on the Hyderabad University campus spread far and wide, that the BJP's love for Dalits was farcical. And, the BJP should forget taking a bite of the 20 per cent Dalit vote base pie in the electoral demography of Uttar Pradesh.

But politics is not stagnant waters. It's rather a flowing river. It absorbs the upheavals and goes on. And,

Dayashankar Singh

thus, the feast of abuse hosted by Dayashankar Singh was not the last one. Mayawati chose to become a deity from a wily politician. She sensed she could be the J Jayalaitha of Uttar Pradesh. And, she unleashed the hooligans upon the wife and minor daughter of Dayashankar Singh. Her crowd wanted his minor daughter. The woman and the girl were hurled choicest abuses. The battered women took shelter with the law of the land against the lynch mob set on them by Mayawati. They lodged an FIR against the BSP supremo. The score is now level. Akhilesh Yadav can now have the last laugh.

Mayawati's rise to political prominence in Uttar Pradesh had never been on account of militant Dalit politics. She had in contrast been the beneficiary of the Brahamanical uprising against the Mandal politics of the state. The BJP liberated her from the shadow of the BSP founder Kanshi Ram. The wily lawyer-turned-politician Satish Chandra Mishra made her the "Iron lady" of Uttar Pradesh. She practiced the mantra of "Bahujan Hitay, Bahujan Sukhay". Mishra helped her in scripting unprecedented social engineering in the run up to the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. She won support of upper castes, most backward castes, extremely backward castes, and, thus, became the queen of the UP politics. She built her political castle whose base was the 20 per cent Dalit vote constituency but the structure was provided by non-Yadav castes. 

Mayawati now appears to have overturned her mantra. Now, she threatens caste polarization. By fueling militant Dalit politics, her castle stands the risk to crumble with other castes likely to polarize against her. Uttar Pradesh is not a Tamil Nadu. The cow-belt is hardly congenial to militant Dalit politics. The past has shown that Dalits alone can not send Mayawati to the seat of power in Lucknow. She appears far from scripting the repeat of the magic of 2007. Much waters have flown in the Ganges in the last one decade.

This blogger had pointedly asked the then president of a national party how much money he had spent in the 2012 UP Assembly elections. He had paused, and then said "Rs 200 crores". He had apparently told the half truth. The amount was much higher. A cash starved political party stands no chance to win the UP elections. This is known to most of the political players. After leaving office in 2012, Mayawati has been out of power for more than four years now. She badly lost the 2014 Lok Sabha elections not only because the Modi magic was blowing like a whirlwind, but also for the fact that her party had been financially drained. Even now she is said to be struggling to lay her hand into the deep pockets of her likely financiers. Those who allegedly benefited during her tenure in the office are either financially bankrupt or have passed away. 

No one raises a slogan on the street of Uttar Pradesh without laying hands on the green notes. Mayawati's show of strength on the Lucknow street may be her attempts to win the support of those who have deep pockets. But they are sitting on the fence. They believe in the words of Harold Wilson, that a week is a long time in politics.

And, the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections are still 10 months away. 

Ear to ground

Who is the most guarded entity in India? 

If a name out of President or Prime Minister of India or Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi or Lal Krishna Advani or Narendra Modi or Mayawati props up in your mind, you're wrong.

It's Ram Lulla in Ayodhya. And he does not lord us over from a palace but a small, a little bigger than a large umbrella, tent. But the security that He commands is to be seen to be believed. Did I err here; yes I think, because He hardly needs any security and, hence, thousands of men in uniforms are largely there to guard the place against weaknesses of lesser mortals. 

Still, people queue up as long as five km to have a fleeting darshan of Him. None complaints even if he is

soaked in sweat on a summer afternoon. Not far away the Saryu is still as majestic as it would have been in the days of Lordship of Ram. Splash your face with the Saryu waters and you feel you can sprint for a few kms straight.

In the by-lanes of Ayodhya, you may invariably come across a man riding a motorcycle with his forehead all but taken away by tika (religious mark). In an end number of temples in Ayodhya, priests will tell that they have pledged their votes for this man, who makes it a point that he seeks blessings of deities by noon. 

That man is Lallu Singh. For over 22 years he was an MLA of Ayodhya. So, one should have expected people on the street to talk of him again, for innumerable giant pillars with beautiful carvings lie around awaiting the grand dream of a majestic temple built in Ayodhya becoming a reality. 

But that was not the case. And a 12-year old boy, still in school uniform, with sparkle in eyes explaining how the economy of Ayodhya could metamorphose into a glittery dream world if the temple became a reality, talked of a eunuch. Gulshan Bindu was swearing in on Lord Hanuman to cure all ills of Ayodhya and she was getting the crowd to believe her words. 

In Faizabad town (Ayodhya is part of it), a BJP election office was all but deserted. Over a cup of tea, the story unfolded from a hardened Hindutva foot-soldier, that Sonia Gandhi had conspired to send the eunuch in the holy town. Expanding the conspiracy theory further, he included Mulayam Singh Yadav also in laying the trap by fielding a Brahmin candidate -- Tej Narain Pandey alias Pawan Pandey -- against Lallu Singh. 

Incidentally, Pandey was then a rookie politician just out of the college and had earned his reputation of a street-fighter in student's union politics. True to the harsh reality of students' politics in UP, Pandey by then had a number of criminal cases against him but what mattered most was Akhilesh Yadav's benign eyes set on him.

Soon, Pandey defeated Lallu Singh, and Ayodhya got a young MLA after 22 years. That was 2012 UP Assembly elections.

In the same season, on a return journey to Delhi from Etawa, the pocket borough of Mulayam, after a rally, our vehicle stopped at a place for tea and snacks-stockings. A bearded man ensured that it was done fast. He did a namaste to the co-passenger, a Samajwadi Party leader. 

"Guess, who is he," teased the Samajwadi. "No idea" came promptly. "He is a BJP MLA from here and is joining us. Now, guess who is sending him to SP," said the Samajwadi. To another "no idea", he said "it's Varun Gandhi". That was also before 2012 UP Assembly elections.  

A few months before, a top BJP leader had said, off-the-record, that the party had a budget of Rs 200 crores for UP Assembly elections. More must have been spent, one can assume quite safely.

Still, the BJP was handed over the worst defeat in the state and it could win just 47 seats out of 403. And that marked an end to the emotive brand of politics that Advani had mid-wifed in 1990s. 

Not more than two years later, the surveys now predict the BJP winning 40 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP. What happened in between is the big story that will be investigated and analysed in the times to come.

More than a year back, Amit Shah took charge of UP. The Kali Dadhi in the tapes of Gulail neither holds

press conferences no addresses rallies. He does not hit headlines also. But surveys are there and Narendra Modi has addressed some of the biggest rallies in the state so far. So, he has been working and results are being seen.

Ask those who know what's Shah doing and you would be told "micro-management". And through this Shah is making BJP's transition from the proponent of emotive politics to one of bread and butter.

"Out of 1.25 lakh booths, he left out 25,000, which were in the Muslim dominated areas, knowing that they will never vote for his party. In each of the booth, he has set up a team of about six people. They all have smart phones and have been taken to various parts of the country to acquaint them with know-hows of networking. It's ensured that these people never fall short of money and no one asks them how did they spend the money. They can directly connect to Shah on phone," sources in the saffron party said.

Next, they add, Shah set up a team of three to four people in each of the 74,000 Gram Panchayats in UP. They too got same training, money and phone as those at the booth levels. He further rose to the block and district level. And, thus, in the course of a year he set up a multi-tier teams of people running into lakhs with whom Shah has held many close-door meetings.

Additionally, he told all the "big leaders" of the BJP in UP (about 10) that they should let him know from where they would contest Lok Sabha elections and should not waste their time in ensuring tickets for their acolytes. And, thus, he bulldozed all factions in the party, which were earlier working at cross-purposes.

So, when Modi has to address a rally in UP, Shah's cells from booth to Gram Panchayat to block to district get activated and they arrange to bring people on their own at the venue. Thus, the buzz is created right at the ground zero a month before Modi addresses the rally and with huge size of the crowd the message is delivered, that the Modi wave has set in.

And, thus, the BJP, whose obituary was written in 2012 Assembly elections, seems running away with most number of Lok Sabha seats in UP. That also gives a major fillip to Modi's aim of reaching close to the magic figure of 272. The difference in Advani's BJP and that of Modi is massive hard work, planning and funds in the hands of workers not leaders.