Mulayam’s absence leaves a mark in Azamgarh

BJP’s ‘Modi wave’ swept India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, on Saturday in the Assembly elections, but there was one district that remained almost untouched by the party’s blitzkrieg. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s stronghold, Azamgarh, which sends 10 MLAs to UP’s Legislative Assembly, will account for just one BJP legislator, Arun Kumar Yadav, who opened the party’s account in the region by wining the Phoolpur Pawai seat in the region by a margin of 7,295 votes.

But even as the BJP could not make inroads in Azamgarh, the Samajwadi Party (SP) could not retain it either. During the previous 2012 Assembly polls, the SP had swept Azamgarh, bagging nine of the 10 Assembly constituencies. But the strike rate of the SP reduced by almost 50 percent and they could bag only five seats.

The Yadav and Muslim-dominated Azamgarh district was the only parliamentary constituency in eastern UP that the BJP lost in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The people of Azamgarh had chosen Mulayam for the Lok Sabha even when the BJP swept the entire region. Azamgarh, political experts say, was won by Mulayam not just electorally but emotionally as well. Some even say that it is Azamgarh that made Mulayam one of the biggest leaders in UP and the tallest OBC leader in the state.

The district has been close to Mulayam not just because of its thick Yadav-Muslim population, but also because Azamgarh played a great role in the socialist movement in UP. Mulayam started his political journey as part of the socialist movement — deeply influenced by the socialist ideology of Ram Manohar Lohia, who is considered the guiding light of SP — and he gave up wrestling and a career in teaching to join the socialist leader’s movement during the 1950s. It was then that he built his base as a grassroots leader and mobilised the other backward classes (OBCs), especially Yadavs, who are considered to be the core support base of the SP.

In the 2014 general elections, when Mulayam won both his traditional Mainpuri seat as well Azamgarh, he chose to keep the latter and relinquished the former. But this time, Mulayam’s absence and the family feud in the party clearly cost the SP heavily and, therefore, it could not repeat its performance of 2012. In his father’s absence, Akhilesh Yadav did try to hold on to its base and addressed as many as seven public meetings across the district in a single day. But his efforts clearly didn’t pay off.

Political analysts also say that Mulayam’s presence would have given a psychological boost to the SP. Having carried the moniker of ‘Mulla Mulayam’ for a long time post the Babri Masjid demolition, Mulayam has a huge appeal among Muslims. But this time, the BSP managed to take away four seats from the SP in the Muslim-dominated district.

Of the 10 seats in the district, five are segments of Mulayam’s Lok Sabha seat and five of the Lalganj Lok Sabha seat. In 2014, Mulayam led all five segments of Azamgarh, while the BJP led in all five of Lalganj. Five of the seats — Didarganj, Nizamabad, Gopalpur, Sagri and Mubarakpur — have a strong Muslim-Yadav presence, and have traditionally been SP seats. But this time, the BSP won three of these seats — Didarganj, Mubarakpur and Sagri.

TEACHING A LESSON?

Political analysts said that the reason Mulayam Singh Yadav did not campaign in Azamgarh is not that he didn’t think about his own prestige, but because he wanted to show his son Akhilesh Yadav that without him, even a winnable district like Azamgarh could not be captured. Mulayam gave a total miss to these elections after an intense family feud, which resulted in Akhilesh’s anointment as the party chief and Mulayam’s shift to the role of a mentor.