Nagina, Uttar Pradesh: Chandra Shekhar Azad, the new young challenger of Dalit politics known for his Bhim Army group, is seeking to replace the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) as the face of the Scheduled Castes in Uttar Pradesh.
He is fighting the Lok Sabha elections from Nagina under the banner of his political party, the Azad Samaj Party (ASP), which has a kettle as its symbol. Interestingly, he is his party’s only candidate in this election.
In the 2022 UP assembly polls, Azad had contested against Yogi Adityanath in Gorakhpur. He only secured 4,501 votes and lost his deposit.
Nagina, an SC-reserved seat, will vote in the first phase Friday. BSP’s Girish Chandra had won from this seat in 2019.
But this time, people are looking towards Azad with hope. After delimitation, this seat was carved out of Bijnor in 2009. Till now, the public has given opportunities to the Samajwadi Party (SP), the BSP and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) one by one.
While 37-year-old Azad is popular among the youth, the older generation still considers Mayawati the key face of Dalits. However, the people of Nagina seem disillusioned with Mayawati.
The craze about Azad among the youth is such that they have photos taken with him as their phone wallpapers. His supporters post dozens of his speeches as their WhatsApp statuses daily.
According to the residents of Nagina, if Azad wins these elections, the community will get a leader. Bhim Singh, sitting at a tea stall at Sherkot Chowk, says there was a time when Mayawati used to roam these streets on a bicycle and ask for votes, but things have changed now.
However, political experts believe Azad cannot win with the help of Dalits alone.
Professor Shashikant Pandey, head of the department of political science at Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar University, says, “Azad does a different kind of politics. He strongly asserts himself among the public. Because of his tone and tenor, a large number of youth from the Dalit community like him.”
However, Pandey adds that even after so many years, he has not been able to establish his presence pan-UP, he has only managed to do so in some pockets of western UP.
With Mayawati’s BSP having weakened over the last decade, a vacuum has been created in Dalit politics in Uttar Pradesh, one that Azad is busy trying to fill. He talks about Dalit identity during his public meetings and frequently takes the names of Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram, the latter’s image being on his party’s flag.
“Nagina is my karmbhoomi, I am not going to leave it,” Azad tells ThePrint. He is a resident of Saharanpur.
On being accused of having an ‘outside’ candidate in Nagina, he says: “If Prime Minister Narendra Modi can be from Gujarat and contest in Varanasi, then Nagina is very close to my district.”
Professor Pandey, quoted earlier, says there is a spark in Azad and he will perhaps become a big leader of Dalit politics in the future. However, he adds, “The way Azad emerged, his expansion did not happen. He cannot win the elections only on the basis of Dalit votes. He will have to add on to it.”
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Ground equation
This time in Nagina, the BJP has fielded Om Kumar, the SP has fielded Manoj Kumar and the BSP has fielded Surendra Pal Singh. Muslims, who make up 46 percent of the population here, play a key role in deciding the winner from the seat. However, this time, Muslims in Nagina seem angry with the Samajwadi Party.
However, on Saturday while addressing a rally in Nagina, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said that this election is being fought on PDA (Pichde, Dalit, Alpsankhyak). Without taking Azad’s name, the former chief minister said that while the BJP government at the Centre is taking away the security cover of other leaders, it is giving security to some people, and this is being given only to those who work for them (the BJP) from behind.
On 29 March, the Centre had accorded Azad ‘Y plus’ security.
However, Azad tells ThePrint: “I come in the dreams of the BJP government as well as the Opposition. This is the growing stature of our movement. This means that they are scared of the struggle we have faced in the past years. I was trying to strengthen the Opposition but they did not accept me.”
He added: “Our people made a lot of effort to provide me security because they know that if anything happens to me, they will have nothing left. The way attempts are being made to assassinate me, the government must have thoughtfully decided to provide security.” Azad was shot at in UP’s Deoband in June last year.
However, Nagina seat also has a significant number of OBC castes like Sainis besides Thakurs, Jats, Brahmins, Kashyaps, Baniyas and Tyagis who are considered BJP voters.
With the constituency having an over 6 lakh Muslim population, Azad is continuously holding roadshows and door-to-door campaigns in Muslim settlements of Nagina.
But local BSP leaders say that even though the party has weakened in the last few years, it has not yet lost its support base. “Mayawati is still a big face of our party, who has a good image among the public. Azad may take the name of Dalits but the entire Dalit community is not going to go with him,” said one such BSP leader, on condition of anonymity.
Azad came to prominence in 2017 when he was booked under the National Security Act in connection with caste-based violence in Saharanpur that year. After being in jail for about a year, he was released and then remained active through protests on the issue of Dalit atrocities. According to Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) data, there are 36 cases against Azad, of which charges have been framed in three cases.
Making space as a Dalit face
During his rallies, Azad chants slogans such as ‘Abhi to li angdayi hai, aage aur ladayi hai’ (Right now it’s a struggle, there is more fight ahead) and ‘Jo sarkar nikammi hai vo sarkar badalni hai’ (The government that is useless has to be changed).
During his Saturday roadshow, he shook hands with 57-year-old Wajid Khan, a resident of Sherkot town. “He is a dabang leader. He doesn’t discriminate between Hindus and Muslims. He raises everyone’s issues. He is not afraid of anyone. He should be in Parliament. For how long will we remain the fief of SP or BSP,” Khan tells ThePrint, adding: “Muslim leadership did not do us any good, so now we can save ourselves by standing with Dalit Hindus.”
Although there was talk of an alliance with Azad’s party, Akhilesh ultimately fielded an SP candidate from Nagina. On discussing alliance with the former CM, Azad says: “We wanted to stop the BJP but Akhilesh kept thinking only about his party. We have to fight not only with the BJP but also with those opposition parties which talk of fighting the BJP.”
Azad made many attempts to join BSP and had also praised Mayawati, but the latter didn’t pay heed. In 2019, Mayawati had targeted Azad in an X (then Twitter) post saying: “Dalits believe that the Bhim Army’s Chandrashekhar is…conspiring to affect the BSP’s vote share…He protests and then deliberately goes to jail.”
Azad’s growing stature among Dalits is troubling BSP on the ground. However, in Nagina constituency itself, many local BSP leaders have joined Azad’s party.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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