The Priyanka Factor: How will it affect UP in the upcoming General Elections

Political Pundits often say, “Politics is all about optics”. This phrase holds key for the Indian National Congress in Uttar Pradesh in the upcoming general elections. On a breezy January afternoon last month, Rahul Gandhi appointed Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Jyotiraditya Scindia as AICC General Secretaries, in-charge of Eastern UP and Western UP respectively. It is commonly said in political corridors that road to Delhi, goes from Lucknow. UP was the state which was primarily responsible for electing Mr. Modi as the PM in the first place. BJP led NDA won a whooping 73 seats in 2014, reducing other parties such as SP and INC to their family seats. Since then a lot of water has passed in Gomti. In an earlier post on this blog (titled THE BIG BANG STATE), I had discussed in detail, political prospects of all parties in UP for upcoming polls.

Continuing from there, why do we need to look things differently now in UP? Since this piece is mostly about Priyanka Vadra and INC’s poll prospects post announcements, I shall focus on the same. First, we need to revisit the current situation of the party in UP. It was reduced to Amethi and Raebareli in 2014 elections, during the Modi wave. But its deterioration started in UP, when the Mandal era began. ND Tiwari was the last CM from the INC in the late 1980s. This continued till 2017, when it was reduced to just 7 MLAs in a state which has 403 MLAs. This was their worst ever performance, especially considering they had allied with Akhilesh Yadav’s SP. It was in power in UP at that time. They even hired Prashant Kishor, the strategist responsible for running Modi’s campaign in 2014. Even if you let 2014 go as an exception, what went wrong for INC in 2017 in UP? I was talking to Prashant Kishor last June, and he said to me what he had, time and gain said in media as well as to Rahul Gandhi back then that for INC to regain ground in UP, it must fight alone in order to revamp its cadre in the state. Because in a coalition, transfer of vote is not always cent percent. Plus, one must understand that INC’s vote is not considered to be transferable, which we have seen across many elections. This was the primary reason why INC was kept out of the SP-BSP alliance. So, the big question now is that will Priyanka Vadra and Jyotiraditya Scindia be able to revive INC’s fortunes in UP? Answer to this question has multiple facets. But first we need to understand what works in UP? I am not going to talk about development and then subtly talk about caste. People aware with UP know what the ground reality is. The most important factor in UP’s electoral politics is caste. If you can get your caste equations right, you are going to run away with the prize. The other factor is chemistry, between the voter and the party. So, what was the INC’s primary base before Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal’s report ruined it for them? There were majorly three main constituents of INC’s vote base. Brahmin, Dalits and Muslims. All of them combined constitute around 50% of state’s population. But since then they all have moved ahead with different political parties with Brahmins majorly moving towards BJP, Dalits towards BSP and Muslims towards SP. BJP in recent times has also been able to penetrate Non-Yadav OBCs and Non-Jatav Dalits, which has been the reason for their astounding success in the state. Now one charge which has been traditionally put on Congress is that it promotes nepotism and members of Gandhi family are above anyone and everyone. But there’s an upside to this as well. The degree of galvanisation that a Gandhi family member can do to its cadre, no one else can. Rahul Gandhi after being disappointed by SP-BSP combine has rather used that idea to his own advantage. This brings us to Priyanka’s impact in the current situation. The base of any leadership is a galvanised cadre, in addition to a leader. Cadre is what INC lacks in the current situation in UP. Mrs. Vadra’s intervention is likely to galvanise the cadre for a strong fight in the next polls. Make no mistake this is not going to make INC win some 40 seats in next polls, because as I said she will galvanise the cadre not the people. What this means is that INC’s worker has a new vigour to work for his/her leader in the state. Will it convert to seats? Most likely No. So, what will it do? To understand the details, we must look at vote shares of each major political party in the state. BJP has around 42% of vote share, SP 22%, BSP 20%, INC 7%. Now after the announcement made by INC, I have been trying to understand this more closely. I have, after detailed analysis come to this conclusion that INC under Priyanka will dent vote share of all major parties. I have already said that INC when fighting alone, even without Priyanka can clock a vote share of around 11%, on its own. Priyanka’s entry is likely to give INC a push of around 5-6 %, overall. That increase is likely to come from its traditional vote base of Brahmins, Muslims and Dalits. But as far as conversion of seats is concerned, it will have impact in pockets. The current situation suggests that it will impact SP-BSP more than BJP. It is because both Muslims and Dalits have traditionally voted for SP and BSP and this will lead to division of these votes. Brahmins have voted majorly for BJP in recent times, although it is also true that Brahmins have very rarely voted en masse, and mostly their vote gets divided between BJP and BSP. So, of the 5-6% increase, around 75-80% is likely to come from SP-BSP combine and the rest from BJP. INC would also be benefited from the fact that in general elections, National parties have slight edge over regional players.  

Political Party	Previous Vote-share	Expected Vote-share (2019)
BJP	42.5%	40%
SP+BSP	42%	32-35%
INC	7%	15-16%

Coming to the number of seats that it can convert in the upcoming general elections. In last elections, INC finished second on six seats including Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Lucknow. INC won 21 seats in 2009 which was really an exception considering the history of last 30 years. This time around, it has specifically decided to focus on around 30 seats when it can challenge the other two factions which include seats such as Kushinagar, Barabanki, Dhaurhara, Bareilly, Saharanpur, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Farrukhabad, Allahabad, Varanasi and a few others. On other 50 seats the grand old party is not even in the picture. Most of these seats are also targeted because of strong candidates in the fray which include quite a few former Union Ministers such as Jitin Prasada, RPN Singh and Salman Khurshid.  How many is it likely to win? It is most likely to win apart from its traditional Amethi and Raebareli, seats such as PL Punia’s Barabanki, RPN Singh’s Kushinagar, Imran Masood’s Saharanpur, Jitin Prasada’s Dhaurhara. At most, INC can win 6-8 seats in the next Lok Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh. But the increase in vote share can, with further consolidation, help it do well in the next assembly elections. All in all, the answer to the question weather Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will impact UP is both YES and NO. 

One more news that has recently emerged is that after the announcement of two AICC general secretaries for UP, SP-BSP are reportedly ready to give a better deal to the Congress party. They were ready to offer INC not more than 8 seats, apart from Amethi and Raebareli, six more seats where it had come second in 2014. Congress party wanted at that time at least 15 seats to contest, which both were not ready to give. Now, after announcement by INC, the alliance is reportedly ready to give 15 seats to Congress party. But Congress party now wants SP,BSP,INC to contest 25 seats each, leaving 5 for other allies. It seems really difficult that the two regional satraps would agree to this understanding. It will be really interesting to see how this situation pans out, because there is nothing which is impossible in politics.