The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)’s calm strength matches the increasing confidence in the BJP’s campaign while chinks start showing up in the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance as Uttar Pradesh gears up for the fourth phase of polling on Thursday.

There are 53 seats in the fourth phase of polling across 12 districts. This area, long considered a BSP stronghold, had an impressive showing by the SP in the 2012 Assembly polls.

The SP had won as many as 24 of the 53 seats, the BSP scored 15 seats and the Congress 6. The BJP was in the fourth place with five seats.

However, the situation is a lot different this time.

After the third phase, where the SP’s internal feud played out in the party’s stronghold across Mainpuri, Etawah, Etah, Kannauj and other seats in the Awadh region, the fourth phase seats, that include the Bundelkhand region area, have witnessed a bid to polarise the voters on communal lines by the BJP.

Modi’s comments In Fatehpur, one of the seats polling on February 23, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a controversial comment about shamshan ghats (cremation grounds) and kabristans (burial grounds). And a day before the polls, BJP President Amit Shah on Wednesday equated his rival parties with Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab. “While Ka and Sa stand for Congress and SP, B stands for Mayawati’s BSP,” said Amit Shah at a public meeting in Chauri Chora.

Analysts and local party workers in these parts believe that the efforts to polarise voters on communal lines works well for the BJP after the constituencies with high concentration of Muslim voters have already polled.

In the second phase, for instance, communal polarisation would have worked better for the SP or the BSP. It is because consolidation of Muslim voters behind one of these parties, in districts such as Moradabad, Sambhal, Rampur and Amroha with close to 50 per cent Muslims, ensures their victory. In 2012, the SP had won every Assembly segment in Moradabad, Amroha and Sambhal.

Communal lines But as the election moves eastwards and Muslim consolidation has less relevance given their decreased concentration, the BJP stands to benefit if voters consolidate on communal rather than caste lines.

At any rate, the BJP has carefully picked candidates whose community lineages attract non-Jatav Dalits from the BSP and non-Yadav OBCs from the SP’s fold. To consolidate these voters further, an appeal on communal lines further works in the BJP’s favour. The party has two of its firebrand Sadhvis – Uma Bharati and Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti – from the Bundelkhand region and they have both been campaigning in the area.

Pitted against each other At the same time, the SP’s challenge is faltering and the contradictions in its alliance with the Congress have started showing up. In a number of seats in the fourth phase, alliance candidates are contesting against each other. In the Sareni assembly constituency in Rae Bareli district from where Congress President Sonia Gandhi is MP, Congress’s Ashok Kumar Singh is fighting sitting MLA Devendra Pratap Singh of the SP.

From Unchahar, also in Rae Bareli district, SP Minister Manoj Kumar Pandey is contesting against Ajay Pal Singh of the Congress.

The BJP has fielded former BSP strongman Swami Prasad Maurya’s son Utkarsh Maurya from this seat. Significantly, in a public letter addressed to the people of Rae Bareli, Sonia Gandhi canvassed support only for the Congress. Her letter did not mention SP or any of its candidates.

Similarly, in Lalitpur and Bindki assembly constituencies too, the SP and the Congress had fielded candidates against each other.

Meanwhile, the BSP has been running an extremely organised campaign with carefully selected candidates. BSP supremo Mayawati has rekindled the demand for separate statehood for Bundelkhand in her campaign speeches and concentrated on consolidating her Dalit voter, a number of whom had drifted to the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

In a triangular contest, the SP looks like it is struggling more than the others to match its 2012 performance, especially in the seats that go to polls on Thursday.

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