Uttar Pradesh: Will Assault On MLA Yogesh Verma Push Kurmi Voters Further Away From BJP?

The assault on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Lakhimpur in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri district, Yogesh Verma, by local Bar Association President Avdhesh Singh has taken a caste angle.

The 9 October incident attracted widespread attention after a video of the assault went viral on social media. Subsequently, caste groups, namely Kurmis and Rajputs, started mobilising.

On Friday (11 October), a large panchayat was organised by the Kurmi community, from which Verma hails, under the banner of Patel Seva Sansthan, demanding strict action against advocate Singh, who belongs to the Rajput community.

A day later, on Saturday, a Kshatriya Mahapanchayat was organised by Rajput Karni Sena to support Singh and his wife Pushpa Singh and demand action against Verma for his alleged indecency.

While the Rajput community is adamant about defending Singh, the Kurmi community has even threatened the ruling BJP to 'show its outrage through ballot in next democratic opportunity' if action is not taken against Singh.

The opposition parties soon jumped in to leverage this opportunity of polarising Kurmi voters in their favour as 10 assembly seats in UP will soon have by polls, four of which have a substantial Kurmi population.

UP Congress general secretary Anil Yadav asserted that this incident highlights how emboldened the goons belonging to UP Chief Minister's own caste are, that they openly beat an MLA of the BJP who hails from the backward community.

Yogi Adityanath belonged to the Rajput community before he took sanyas, while Kurmis fall under Other Backward Classes (OBC). "This government is anti-backward and anti-Dalit, where even MLAs from these sections are not safe," Yadav alleged.

Similarly, Samajwadi Party (SP) national president Akhilesh Yadav said, "The real reason for the insult of a ruling party MLA of UP is that before being a ruling party MLA, he is a PDA and on the other hand, is an attacking supremacist."

Notably, PDA is a formula given by Yadav to expand his M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) vote bank and include Backwards, Dalits and Adivasis (tribals) in it, along with Alpasankhyak (minorities) who have been traditional voters of the SP.

Yadav had earlier, too, tried to target the Thakur (Rajput) community by calling the Special Task Force (STF) as Special Thakur Force for allegedly encountering only those who belong to PDA communities.

The focus of INDI Alliance parties (SP and Congress) on Kurmi voters comes after a reasonable success in gaining the community votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

This was evident from the fact that of the 11 elected Kurmi leaders, seven were from the SP, while only three were from the BJP and one from Apna Dal (Soneylal) [AD(S)], a BJP ally under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Even the margin of victory of the winning Kurmi NDA candidates like Chhatrapal Gangwar in Bareilly, Pankaj Chaudhary in Maharajganj, Praveen Patel in Phulpur and Anupriya Patel in Mirzapur was drastically reduced.

The signs of such a shift were visible in the 2022 UP assembly elections as well when 13 Kurmi candidates of SP won the election, up from two in 2017. Moreover, UP Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya lost to SP alliance's Kurmi candidate.

If Kurmi votes polarise further against the BJP after the recent assault incident, the ruling party will have to struggle in Mirzapur's Majhawan, Phulpur, Ambedkar Nagar's Katehari and Kanpur's Sisamau seats.

These seats have considerable Kurmi populations. Two of them were won by the SP in 2022, one of Katehari by a Kurmi candidate, Lalji Verma, who vacated the seat on winning the Lok Sabha election from Ambedkar Nagar.

The SP has fielded his wife Shobhavati Verma, again a Kurmi here. Katehari has almost equal populations of Kurmis and Brahmins. The BJP is yet to declare its candidates.

Similarly, the SP has declared the wife of former MLA Irfan Solanki, who had to vacate the seat due to conviction in a case, Naseem Solanki from Sisamau, where Kurmis have a substantial population after Muslims.

Phulpur had a Kurmi BJP MLA, Praveen Patel who won the Lok Sabha election from Phulpur, while Majhawan had an MLA from the BJP-ally NISHAD party, who won the Lok Sabha election on the BJP ticket from Bhadohi.

Notably, Phulpur has the highest population of Kurmis, followed by that of Muslims. Here, the SP has declared former MLA Mustafa Siddiqui, a Muslim ,as the candidate, who lost here in 2022 by a narrow margin of 2,700 votes.

In Majhawan, the daughter of former MP Ramesh Bind, Dr Jyoti Bind, has been fielded. Ramesh had lost the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Mirzapur on the SP ticket.

After Brahmins, Dalits and Binds, Kurmis form the fourth largest chunk of the electorate in Majhawan. The BJP has not declared its candidate but its allies AD(S) and NISHAD Party are eyeing to contest the Majahwan seat.

It remains to be seen whether the BJP will be able to win back Kurmi votes after a substantial attrition in the 2024 Lok Sabha and 2022 Vidhan Sabha elections, especially in light of the Yogesh Verma assault case.