Madhya Pradesh: BJP’s sway over OBCs faces stiffest challenge in 20 years

A combination of at least four factors have made the Congress look confident and the BJP jittery in the run-up to the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) owed – to a great extent – its victories in successive assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh since 2003 to the steadfast support it got from the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), which comprise over 50 percent of the state’s population.

Even in the 2018 assembly election a substantial majority of the OBCs stayed loyal to the BJP, though the party lost power to the Congress by a slender margin despite garnering more votes.

But in the coming assembly election, the ruling party appears to be facing its stiffest-ever challenge in the past two decades to its electoral upper hand from the Congress. It stems from the Congress’s determined effort to loosen the confederation of intermediate castes in the state that have stuck with the BJP through thick and thin.

Factors Hurting BJP’s OBC Connect

A combination of at least four factors have made the Congress look confident and the BJP jittery in the run-up to the assembly elections about their respective poll prospects.

One, it was the short-lived Kamal Nath-led Congress government which doubled reservation for OBCs in 2019 to 27 percent through an ordinance even though the Mandal Commission’s recommendations on this score had come into force way back in 1993 at the central level.

Two, the Congress has promised to undertake a caste-based census in Madhya Pradesh, too. Three, the Congress has upped the ante on the recently-passed Women Reservation Bill by demanding its immediate implementation and a provision for sub quota within it for OBC women.

Four, Uma Bharti, who in the 2003 assembly election embodied a rare combination of the first woman chief ministerial face of the BJP in Madhya Pradesh, its most prominent OBC leader and one of the most visible Hindutva icons, is sulking over her neglect in the party.

Uma Bharti: Flagbearer Then, Dispensable Now

Openly defying her party’s stand on the Women Reservation Bill, the Sadhvi has made a common cause with the Congress in demanding quota within quota for OBC women and has written a letter to this effect to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Uma Bharati is annoyed over her non-inclusion in all the committees the BJP has formed for the assembly election campaign. Also, she has expressed dismay over not being invited to party functions.

The BJP leadership may have dismissed the once- firebrand Sadhvi as a spent force but she still holds considerable sway over her Lodhi caste which is a powerful voting bloc in the Bundelkhand region.

Her predicament is that she has no option but to sulk. She is so deeply identified with Hindutva that she cannot join the Congress. Another option of floating a new party of her own is unviable at this stage; she had launched her party soon after she was expelled from the BJP in 2007 but it came a cropper and, after many years in political wilderness, she was allowed to reenter the BJP and contest the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Jhansi seat.

However, the BJP has not let her become active in her home state. She is restless and waiting to reassert her political clout – within the BJP if the party manages to mollify her or outside it, if not.

No Mandal Vs Kamandal In MP

Either way, the BJP’s challenge of maintaining a hold over its OBC votebank is unlikely to become easier. The party can no longer afford to take its most formidable support-base for granted in the face of the Congress demands for caste-based census and quota within quota for OBCs in the women reservation bill.

Further, the BJP has no satisfactory answer to the Congress poser as to why the saffron party kept sitting on the Mandal commission recommendation of 27 percent quota for the OBCs all these years while ruling the state.

Unlike UP and Bihar, Madhya Pradesh has been largely unaffected by “Mandal versus Kamandal” politics. The state’s bipolar polity has been dominated by mostly upper caste leaders in both Congress and BJP since its inception in 1956, without letting identity-based regional outfits strike roots.

Potential Laloo Prasad Yadavs, Mulayam Singh Yadavs or Nitish Kumars have had to play second fiddle to the upper caste leaders in the Congress as well as the BJP. That was why the demand to implement a 27 percent quota for the OBCs remained weak enough to be ignored by successive chief ministers.

How BJP Subsumed OBCs In Hindutva Fold

When Uma Bharti was chosen to spearhead the BJP campaign in 2003, her aggressive campaign ensured that the OBC aspirations were subsumed within the overarching umbrella of the Hindutva. The gamble paid off.

Like Uma Bharti, who was chief minister for only eight months, her successors in the BJP – late Babulal Gaur (Yadav) and Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Kirar) – also belonged to the OBC castes.

Hindutva remained the leitmotif of the BJP governments while OBCs were apparently happy to have a chief minister from their own category. The Congress failed to offer a potent challenger from the OBCs to Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

However, political dynamics have changed after Kamal Nath posed a serious challenge to BJP’s OBC citadel by implementing 27 percent reservation in 2019. Since then the Congress has raised the pitch for greater empowerment to the OBCs, though the party still lacks strong leaders from the backward castes.

Rakesh Dixit is a senior journalist based in Bhopal. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.