Mandate 2022 testifies to decisive role of reserved seats in elections

Lucknow: This year’s assembly elections again established the notion that only the party that wins the maximum number of reserved seats in UP gets success in forming the govt in the state. According to the election results, out of the 86 reserved seats, the BJP alliance succeeded to win 65 seats.

This figure of seats is 75 percent of the total reserved seats. The saffron party also managed to make inroads among the Jatav vote bank, which was once considered the base vote bank of the BSP. Whereas the main opposition party SP could get only 20 seats.

BSP and Cong could not get a single seat from the reserved category. The BJP has, since the last few elections, laid the foundation of a multipronged approach to strengthen the hold among the Dalit vote bank. With the help of this strategy, the party was successful in making an impact on a large section of the non-Jatav voters. This time too, BJP had fielded a large number of non-Jatav candidates.

In these, candidates of Valmiki, Khatik, Pasi, Dhobi, Kori, Dhangar and Dhanuk sub-castes were mainly included. However, this time BJP strategists had also focused on Jatav voters. For this purpose, the former governor of Uttarakhand, Babyrani Maurya was given special responsibility.

Former IPS Asim Arun, who belongs to this community, was fielded as a candidate from Kannauj. However, BJP tried to give a big message by fielding Jagpal Singh of Jatav community from the general seat of Saharanpur.

But Jagpal lost the election to Ashu Malik of SP. Along with this, both the seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes category were also occupied by the BJP.