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| Mayawati calls herself 'living goddess' | | 50 million people likely to vote in UP polls | |
BL KAK
NEW DELHI, Apr 5: As many as 50 million people are likely to vote in the month-long Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, which begin on Saturday, April 7. A fiery woman from the country's 'most backward' classes, who now wears diamonds, and a wrestler-turned-regional strongman are at the fore in the crucial polls.
'Diamond woman' Mayawati's party, which bases its support on Dalits, as untouchables prefer to be known now, hopes to hit hard former wrestler Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav’s ruling party. Yadav’s Samajwadi Party won 145 seats in State elections in 2002 but enjoys support from other local parties, while Mayawati’s Bahajun Samaj Party (BSP) took 98 seats.
Polls have the two parties neck-and-neck with roughly 30 percent of the vote each. Firebrand Mayawati, who was born into a lowly leatherworker caste at the bottom of India’s rigid hierarchy but went on to become one of India’s most powerful women, has called herself a “living goddess.” More recently she told voters that if she wins she would thoroughly investigate Mulayam Yadav, who counts on his own large Yadav caste and Muslims for support. This prompted Mulayam Singh Yadav to make a rather unusual electoral appeal. “Do you want me to go to jail or do you want me to work?” Yadav asked voters at a rally in UP early this week. And his desperate appeal to the voters: “Vote me in to power. Otherwise I will go to jail”.
Mayawati herself is also under investigation for her role in a heritage project that would have had a giant mall built near the Taj Mahal, the medieval Mughal monument to love, which is located in Uttar Pradesh. Allegations of corruption are small fry in a State where murderers, gangsters and gun molls are among those competing openly for 403 seats. Officials in UP were on edge as they geared up for the epic voting exercise in a State with 100 million voters on the rolls, though past elections show only about a 50 percent turnout.
UP's Chief Electoral Officer, AK Bishnoi, has been quoted as aying: “It is not an easy job to conduct elections in a State where criminals and mafia lords also vie for political power". On the first day of elections on Saturday, voters will choose among 783 candidates competing for 62 seats under the gaze of some 60,000 paramilitary troops. Almost 200,000 electronic voting machines will be used and voters have been issued new voting photo identification in an attempt by the Election Commission to clean up elections.
Personal appeals, attacks and promises notwithstanding, analysts say people are likely to vote much as they did in the last election and the election before that — along caste lines. Those loyalties often prove more powerful than promises of schools, roads, water and electricity. “Voters in Uttar Pradesh are sharply polarised”, said Sanjay Kumar, a fellow with the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. “The sense of identification is what overrides everything”. But Kumar added that parties were trying to woo new support bases while at the same time holding on to their traditional voters.
Mayawati — who once ran on a slogan that told Dalits to beat upper-class Hindus four times with their shoes — is now reaching out to Brahmins at the top of the Hindu food chain. Her new slogan invites everyone, including the same Hindus she wanted to see beaten, “to come ride on the elephant”, her party’s symbol. As the regional parties trade barbs, national parties like the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) appear to be fighting for third and fourth spots.
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