UP polls: Critical phase as Yadav belt votes today

LUCKNOW: The third phase of the UP assembly polls on Sunday is in the home turf of SP’s supremos.
It is in this part of central UP, which includes Mainpuri and Kannauj, that the SP has traditionally done best and if it is to have any hope of continuing in office come March 11, it must win the bulk of the 69 seats in this phase.
Five years ago, in 2012, it won 55 seats leaving just 14 for the rest.With a vote share of 34.1%, it was comfortably ahead of its main rival BSP’s 26.6%.
The BJP and Congress were far behind — both under 15% — despite the presence of large urban areas like Lucknow and Kanpur in the mix.
However, by 2014, the situation changed dramatically as it had in the rest of the state.
The BJP’s vote share was up from 14.3% to 42.9% and not surprisingly it led in 52 of the 69 segments.
The SP’s vote share was down to 22.6%. This presents the SP with a big challenge this election. But the task may not be as uphill as the numbers suggest.
One factor would be the benefit of Congress votes in the bigger urban centres. In the phase as a whole, the gap between the BJP and the combined tally of the SP and Congress in 2014 was about 10 percentage points.
If the BJP’s vote share goes down significantly from the peak of the Modi wave in 2014 and the SP-Congress alliance is able to enthuse voters that gap may be not as big.
On the other hand, if there is indeed resentment within SP’s ranks over the manner in which Akhilesh apparently upstaged his father and uncle to become the party’s numero uno, this is where the old guard could garner strong support.
For Mayawati’s BSP, there is little to lose With a mere six seats won in 2012 assembly polls here and just seven segment leads in the LS polls, things can only look up for the BSP.