The Samajwadi Party’s victory in the Ballia Lok Sabha bypoll suggests that Mayavati’s Brahmin-Dalit alliance could be vulnerable to a new Yadav-Rajput axis in Uttar Pradesh.

The result has also underlined that the two national parties, the Congress and the BJP, are still out of the frame in the state.

Samajwadi candidate Neeraj Shekhar, son of the late Chandra Shekhar who represented the constituency for eight terms, yesterday defeated the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate by 131,000 votes.

The BSP had long been trying to wrest the seat from Chandra Shekhar, and thought its chance had come when the former Prime Minister died.

It pinned its hopes on the Dalit-Brahmin combination and fielded Vinay Shankar Tiwari, son of minister Hari Shankar Tiwari, who, the party thought, could offset the sympathy factor in Neeraj’s favour with judicious use of money and muscle.

But the result showed the Yadav voter was still staunchly behind Mulayam, and that a tactical alliance with the Rajputs could upset Mayavati’s calculations. Mulayam appears to have been more successful in wooing the warrior caste than the BJP, whose president Rajnath Singh is a Rajput.

Shekhar’s support base among Rajputs, Yadavs and Muslims could hold him in a comfortable position in the seat, which is identified with Chandrashekhar, political observers feel.

Chandra Shekhar had won the last election by over 70,000 votes but his son has almost doubled the margin. Yet, in the state elections eight months ago, the BSP had won three of Ballia’s five Assembly segments, totting more votes than the Samajwadi overall from the parliamentary constituency.

Banking on its social engineering formula, BSP had deployed Cabinet Minister Nasimuddin Siddiqui to seek support of six per cent Muslims, Hari Shankar Tiwari to encash 11 per cent Brahmin votes and Minister Ram Achal Rajbhar and Nand Gopa Nandi to target Dalit and Vaish vote bank in favour of the party.

The Congress, too, fielded a Brahmin, the son of a wealthy contractor. But the party came fifth with barely 10,000 votes, behind the little-known Bharatiya Samaj Party.

BJP candidate Virendra Singh, a two-time MP from neighbouring Mirzapur, polled 22,723 votes. It’s around 60,000 less than the BJP’s combined tally from Ballia’s five segments in the Assembly polls.

The BJP leadership may be ruing its decision to junk an alternative plan not to contest the election, as Rajnath had suggested, as a goodwill gesture towards Chandra Shekhar’s son. Sources say he realised his party could not win, and that the best option was to send out a “positive signal” to the Rajputs by supporting Neeraj.

Source : http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080104/jsp/nation/story_8741842.jsp