Lok Sabha polls 2014: Apna Dal ace Anupriya Patel in Amit Shah’s OBC plan

NEW DELHI: A day before Narendra Modi’s grand show in Varanasi while filing his nomination papers from the holy city last month, his trusted general secretary Amit Shah was in neighbouring Mirzapur to participate in a road show en route to another nomination, a gesture that he has not extended to any other BJP candidate.

The candidate was Anupriya Patel, MLA from Ruhaniya assembly seat in Varanasi and head of the Kurmi dominated Apna Dal, which had lately allied with the BJP for the 2014 polls. Shah was sending out a powerful message to the rank and file of his party, to get over any resentment against Patel and fall in line.

Patel is the lynchpin for Shah’s grand strategy to secure the support of the Other Backward Classes in Uttar Pradesh. Her victory would do more than just bring another seat to the party’s kitty; it would comprehensively rid the BJP of the tag of being just a "Brahmin-Baniya" party.

The Kurmi-Kunbi vote, addressed by the Apna Dal is spread over 37 Assembly seats mostly in eastern Uttar Pradesh. That Patel is an MLA from Varanasi also comes in handy for BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. The party was founded by Sone Lal Patel, father of Anupriya, in 1995, after he parted ways with the Bahujan Samaj Party.

Apna Dal has had a chequered association with the BJP, an uneasy alliance in 2007 still saw a contest between Sone Lal Patel and then BJP MLA Ajay Rai (who is now contesting against Modi on a Congress ticket) in the Kolasla seat.

Even now, the bad blood has alienated upper caste voters of the BJP in the area. "I can understand why Brahmins and others would be upset, since our party has fought for social equality of the backward classes, but in this case they would be the losers if they didn’t support me," Anupriya Patel told ET. Patel says that she and other members of her party’s leadership had even negotiated with the Congress.