Etawah, where 'gathbandhan' clicked in 1991

ETAWAH: At the peak of the Ram Temple movement in 1992, the BJP victory march was stopped dead on its tracks when Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kanshi Ram entered into an alliance. The slogan of ‘Mile Mulayam Kanshi Ram, hawa main ud gaye Jai Shri Ram’ rent the air and the BJP was trounced. Yadav, then, emerged as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.
Their alliance was not sudden. In 1991, Kanshi Ram, who had by now failed to register a win in two consecutive Lok Sabha elections in 1988 and 1989 from Allahabad and East Delhi respectively, decided to enter the fray once again from Etawah, backed by Mulayam from his home turf and Yadav bastion. Kanshi Ram defeated his nearest BJP rival by over 20,000 votes.

Twenty-seven years later, the party’s leaders have changed and so has the constituency. Etawah, however, is once again the laboratory where BSP Chief Mayawati and Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav are putting to test the social experiment first tried by their parties founders.

Present-day Etawah, however, has undergone sociological change. From being the Yadav-dominated constituency it was some decades ago, it is now a reserved seat home to over 4.23 lakh Dalits. After the last delimitation, a bulk of the Yadav population has shifted to neighbouring Mainpuri seat, promising to increase, local analysts say, Mulayam’s victory.

The BJP’s presence, however, has remained constant. In 1991, BJP was a runnerup. In 2014, it won Etawah. This time, there is a head-on battle between BJP’s Ram Shankar Katheria, the party’s incumbent Agra MP, and Kamlesh Katheria, the son of former Samajwadi Party MP Prem Shankar Katheria, who is the mahagathbandhan’s consensus candidate. Congress has fielded BJP turncoat and sitting MP Ashok Dohare.

Even as the alliance hopes to garner a chunk of the Dalit, Yadav and Muslim votes, there seems an upper caste consolidation around the BJP. Opinions are also divided on rural and urban lines. While the rural populace gives an edge to the gathbandhan, large urban sections still swear by Modi.

In the rural parts, disenchantment runs deep. Ram Kumar, a farmer in Aminabad said, “We don’t know who benefited from demonetisation. All we know is that we are still plowing the land.”

“Promises every government makes are never to better our lives,” says Virendra Singh, another farmer.

An equally vocal segment, however, maintains Modi’s leadership has steered the country in the positive direction. “Modi ji has made sure India’s position and perception in the World has improved,” said Aslam Khan, a tea stall vendor.