 Hello and welcome to Newsbreak. Today we are going to discuss mapping the elections with Seema Mustafa. Seema, all eyes are right now on UP and Vihar because this is the bulk of the seats from North India. And let us face it, it is a North Indian vote which is going to decide what is going to happen to BJP because they do not really have much of a presence in the South. How do you look at the first, the UP elections? 8 seats in Western UP are going into elections. So what do you think is the scenario in Western UP? Well, it is very interesting because this time, you know, there has been a very concerted effort by Ajit Singh and the Rashtri Lopthal to get back the Jat vote. And Ajit Singh actually told me that how they have worked very systematically over the last one year on that Jat vote because he has finally realized that he is losing that entire constituency. Yeah, the constituency which his father had sort of created for them. So he said that they went to the Jats and they said, look, you need to be powerful here and you cannot be powerful and have a say in who the government is or what government is formed unless you are a power vote and that you can only be with the Muslims. And you voted in the past for the Muslims. I mean, this is exactly how he was telling me. And now you guys should come together. They also work on your field. And you know, this whole fracturing of Muzaffar Nagar where incidentally he is contesting the election from should not happen and we should come back together. So he is now very sure that the Jat is returning and this Mahagat Bandhan rally that they had three days ago in Saharanpur, western UP, Dioband area, there was a huge response. I mean, people say bigger than what was in Modi's last rally in this area. So it's very interesting and the Jats came out to listen. You know what you are saying also makes a different kind of sense because one is the unrest among the peasantry and that has affected the Jat peasantry as well. Sugarcane. Sugarcane and in fact, there's a bigger issue over there that they have gone into sugarcane in a larger way partly because of the threat of cows now the stray cattle menace which is now endangering their feed. And the cane is one crop which the cows find it more difficult shall we say and therefore it's less affected by the cow menace. So they have put in a lot of things on cane but unfortunately the sugar prices, both the international prices and the local prices, huge time takes for them to realize it. All of it is affected the Jat peasantry as well. It really is a part of the peasant unrest which you have seen. But it depends now to what extent the communalization is actually seeped in. The last 24 hours always you know is when this vote bank decides where it's going to go. I remember in the 2014 elections and I mean in the last elections that where are you going to vote after demonetization in the assembly elections and everybody in this belt came out and said we are very angry and they've ruined us and then they brought yogi in right. So you can't say what happens in the last 24 hours and much as we would like to underestimate communalization in UP given the fact that we all talking about how the elections campaigns are on issues and they being fought on real issues and economic livelihood. At the end in those 24 hours which is always crucial in the Hindi belt somehow these guys have the machinery and the organization to be able to flip things. Kind of hate propaganda which comes on WhatsApp and so on what it does. But you know this other thing that you talked about that Charan Singh had also built the alliance based on peasantry but also on the Muslims and the Jats peasantry and the workers, farm workers not being split. But he's been able to also project a secular constituency for himself as well as his party. That actually did fracture with Muzaffar Nagar and what the BJP has been doing for the last 20, 25 years in western UP. Yes and it was the Muzaffar Nagar was important because it moved away for the first time in this area from the towns into the villages. And it was communal violence. And the other thing was neighbor hit neighbor which doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. Usually the people who come in and you know these kind of things are usually outsiders in the village, in a village when you have this happening. Even now the entire villages where the Muslims haven't gone back because it's your neighbor who attacked. So it is a fractured sort of constituency. So while they've been working at it, have they worked enough? Is it actually mended fences? Are they actually coming back together? But what was very heartening on a positive note was the Gadbandhan rally in Sarampur because you had all the communities there including Dalits. And you had a very responsive, very enthusiastic crowd which was responding to all the three leaders, Mayavati, Kilesh Yadav and Ajit Singh. That's an interesting point because Jata when Jata is an old again tension. Yes. So while there was a secular constituency of Charan Singh it was a very casteist constituency of Charan Singh. Very anti Dalit and very anti Jata. Dalits were not allowed to vote. No. They kept out of the booths and even if they came to vote they faced violence later. Yes. And this time because of the Gadbandhan you will find that you know in these candidates who are say from not the BSP but our RLD or even Samajwadi they are actually moving to seek the Dalit vote. Now that whether it gets transferred or not will depend but obviously Mayavati has made it very clear and the chemistry between the three was rehearsed, it was good. They didn't say anything which was wrong because they were really on show and a lot of voters of that region had said that we want to see how they are in this rally before we make up our mind. That's an interesting point because this issue of chemistry between the SP and BSP has been discussed a number of times that it's almost impossible for these two parties to come together but it was not so much the SP, BSP per se. It was also the muleim and the old guard who when the incident happened in the guest house if you remember the Dag Bangalore and that violence which was unleashed physically against Mayavati and the response of muleim after that not even an apology but a brazen justification that was really what fractured the relation so it's in that sense helped that the SP is no longer headed by muleim and he's really become a kind of... A patriarch sort of. Patriarch who is given respect but not listened to. Not listened to, yes, exactly. And I think Akhilesh Yadav's personality really contributes to this because he's very soft, he's quiet, he's very, you know he's sort of really very generous in the way he discusses or, you know, the alliances and it's a soft spoken, very sort of whatever you want, Mayavati Ji, Behendi kind of attitude that has really worked for him. Though he's a very firm guy, he knows exactly what he wants. He never moved back, he isolated that other uncle of his, Shivpali Yadav he made it very clear that muleim's saying you're my father but it's got to be the way I want to run the party running it. Well, you know this is of course the larger issue of dynastic politics which we won't discuss today but Congress is it going to be a spoiler in UP or at least in Western UP? That's what the fear, I think we did discuss it on one of our programs but it's becoming very real and apparently it's going to have a lot of considerable impact on several seats in Western UP which is going to polls tomorrow which is on the 11th and other seats also which are going to follow like for instance Muradabad. I mean that's you know something which you the Congress had one percent seats one percent of the vote share in the last election and they have brought in a very strong candidate from Pratapgarh, Imran Pratapgarhi while he is strong is he's like a rock star amongst the Muslims. He's sort of into you know this churns out poetry gets emotional, weeps, cries and yet keeps secular you know his language is very secular but he's the guy who's been brought in now he's very popular, he's a household name and if the Muslim vote splits over there then the BJP comes in. So there are lots of these seats where they have actually fielded candidates to contest the Mahogad Bandai which is which is just absurd. Well that we have discussed last time that the Congress seems to be thinking that it should be the key opposition it is not thinking of defeating the BJP at the moment and that's also seems to be the calculations that we cannot vacate the opposition space in states like that. I know and if that's going to be your calculation then you should have prepared for it for the last five years and maybe today you've been in a position to do it but you can't do it two months before the polls because you know it's you've got no organization in UP which is capable of mopping the votes. So at the most you will be a spoiler you won't win the seat but now will the Mahogad Bandai. Coming back to BJP to Bihar and I'm not sure we should call it the Mahogad Bandai at the most we can call it really the Gad Bandai. So Bihar is a little more like Mahogad Bandai except the left has really not come into it left has some pockets of influence I think there's only an adjustment over Ara as of now but no other seat including Begusarai. What do you think first? What are the broad picture you see in Bihar? Because we take the last election arithmetic into account unless there is a significant swing away from Nitesh BJP assuming that it still remains a sort of stable voting block of uppercast sections which don't see any other party in Bihar except the Congress which is of course there with the Gad Bandai. So what do you think that it is like? Do you think Lalu who is going to lose some support amongst his vote base? Well you know the reports are conflicting we yet have to go in and really look at the whole thing. From Ara it seems ML candidate is doing fairly well. Begusarai there's of course the CPI candidate who didn't leave the seat for him so he's contesting. Now it all depends on whether he gets the Bhoomiar vote and whether he gets the Muslim vote away in which case he'll have a winning target because in Bihar you know it's not that you come in in these states as national leaders you also come in against the local factors that all ranged against you. I mean there is a popular RJD candidate who is very strong he's the old socialist of the Lohia kind he's got a very strong support amongst the Muslims Bhoomiar of course there is the CPI base but the Bhoomiar is also with the BJP so Kanhaiya will have to whip up a certain kind of campaign which he seems to be doing pretty well but in Bihar you know the conflicting story is between whether Nitesh has lost to what extent has he lost and to what extent has that vote moved away from him and the other report is that Bandhan is doing very well or the Mahagat Bandhan is doing very well because they managed to get some of those parties which were last time in alliance with the BJP so the shift is obviously towards them and there is this Yadam, Muslim, Dalit kind of a consolidation that is making itself felt in Bihar. So you think that there could be some shift away from particularly Nitesh's vote base because Nitesh in Bihar had a non shall we say Yadam but a OBC vote base and a little bit of the uppercase and others talking also among the Muslims he was regarded as a secular force in the last election and before the last election even when he did go with the BJP his secular image was not really that dented but this election after the polarization we have seen in the country the kind of hatred that is being sort of served on a platter everywhere I think the Muslim has no choice but to move away from him because he is seen as the grand betrayer he betrayed a vote the Yadams also look upon him by the way as a grand betrayer because they came out of Lalu in the last election parliamentary election and for them it is Lalu all the way now particularly so there is this big vote bank which things that they've been done against and I don't think in terms of development what he did earlier in the last year or two it's not been tremendous development plus the polarization so interestingly I always feel that Bihar is less communal and more casteist than UP or not more equally casteist but somehow less communal than UP in the sense it's very difficult it's not easy to polarise people on Hindu Muslim lines there because it's cut so deeply by caste and maybe the BJP hasn't been able to work there with the same focus and intent as it has been able to in UP well UP the BJP old Jansung base if you remember goes much deeper and then you have this Adityanath sitting there but apart from that it's a much deeper communal base if you take Bihar there is a strong socialist base I don't forget there was to be a strong left CPI later on you know it splits but even liberation CPI and it's got a percentage of votes that you see I mean even in Begusarai the CPI had 19% of the votes which is good for a party which doesn't have any organisation there so in this sense the people therefore have seen socialist and left politics in a big way in Bihar in 60s what we remember the CPI was a big force in Bihar and Eastern UP and Eastern UP but Bihar was really significantly higher than Eastern UP so what I'm saying is BJP or Jansung at that time its communal politics was contested by both socialist and communist not only the congress in fact congress as you said used to be a casteist formation in Bihar and that legacy still continues both with the BJP and with the congress in fact everybody you know over the last year absolutely right and they played really deep communal politics I mean if it came from the Ramandir and then it came with Rajiv Gandhi's Ramrajya and then the whole thing it's been the laboratory the playground not even the laboratory the playground of polarizing divisive politics of hate so it's come a long way which is why now when I speak of UP I speak with the rider of how the communal element or that virus that has been fed into that state is going to react in the last 24 hours before election before polling yes I think if the communal virus is bitten most deeply it will be Gujarat and followed by UP these I think are the two states where it has really gone very deep and the countervading forces have in that sense have been more shall we say community based in terms of caste formations and not really secular formations who can really contest therefore not identity politics but really with secular politics which always you know is the really the counter counter point of the antipodes so to say it's secular versus communal the minute you get into caste versus caste then engineering caste alliances becomes also a game which the BJP seems to have learned pretty well very well and I think what in Gujarat the polarization the fracturing is complete you know I mean you have different colonies people stay separately it's like you've actually and you will you know when you cover the elections or move around Gujarat you will find the Muslims carrying the identity on a sleeve and being ignored they're not there they're not they don't have a say in most issues they just have to be happy that they are not being targeted UP hasn't yet come to that point of complete segregation it's in the process and another five years will complete it I think if we don't manage to reverse it exactly so things are interesting very we are living in interesting times as a Chinese and fluid you know which is why it's probably being reflected in what we are saying because we really don't know we can just tap the broad parameters it's all very fluid lots of things are at play in UP and Bihar but one thing I think is almost certain the BJP is not going to be able to repeat the same amazing performance it had the 2014 election so that is a gain for the other side that those numbers cannot be replicated today thank you very much Sima for being with us mapping the elections not only in terms of seats constituencies but also in terms of what are the voting blocks what are the kind of issues from which the votes are likely to take place it's difficult to hold a crystal ball and predict this elections particularly this time because we have the recent incidents in Pulwama followed by Balakot so all of this is also shall we say a volatile mix at the moment this is all the time we have the news click today do keep watching news click