BJP ahead in battle for towns, Samajwadi Party goes all out to woo villages

Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party’s election office in Ballia’s Jafriganj is deserted at 3 in the afternoon. There are just two workers there, and one of them is asleep on a cot. The other says all campaigners have hit the road to the villages. "You will not find anyone in the cities" he says, nudging the man spread-eagled next to him.

In a last-mile push, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s men have been aggressively wooing the villages, the gaons and dehats, perhaps aware that they may have lost the battle in the towns and cities to BJP. They are telling the pradhans and sarpanchs that with three more years left for the Akhilesh government in Lucknow, it makes sense for them to do business with SP.
Yashpal Singh, SP district president in Ballia, says campaigning has been hectic and most of his day is spent in the dehat. "We have support there," he adds. Dushyant Kumar, the village pradhan of Kurali in Baghpat, readily agrees with him.

"Representatives of SP did approach us," Kumar says. "They said they would be there till Akhilesh’s term ends, and that we should be with them. I find it logical. At the grass root level, we can only do something good in our village if we have people in power who listen to our problems."

With just two phases of polling left, SP’s urgency in sending its workers to UP’s vast rural stretches is understandable. Moreover, the party feels that because there is no BJP MP contesting any of the 15 seats going to polls on May 7 and just 4 out of the 18 that vote on May 12, the new candidates will have to do much more than just ride piggyback on the ‘Modi wave’.

But there is fear that in some cases, SP cadres may be overdoing it. Poshaki Lal, a former gram pradhan of village Angadpur in Aonla tehsil, alleged that fair price shop owners have been told that if they are not able to arrange at least 100 votes for the SP from their villages, their licence would be cancelled. "There is more coercion than allurement," Lal complained.