Political warriors ready for battle of high-profile Awadh

Lucknow: The Awadh region of UP has been in the limelight for three decades over the Ram temple issue. Twenty one districts including capital Lucknow belong to this part; this region includes 118 assembly seats.

Of the nine districts where voting is going to be held in the fourth phase, seven districts are part of the Awadh region.

In the last elections held in 2017, the BJP had won more than the eighty per cent of the seats in the Awadh region.

While Samajwadi Party secured 12 seats, BSP got 6 and Congress got two seats only. The number of reserved seats in this phase is 16. Dalit voters play a decisive role in the Awadh region as the population of the Dalit community in this part is around 25 percent. Maximum 32 percent Dalit voters are in Sitapur district. So the number of these voters in Lucknow is only 21 per cent.

Dalit voters are also classified into Jatav and Non-Jatav. Out of which a significant part of Jatav fraternity has been associated with BSP even last time; whereas the BJP and SP got the support of twothirds of the non-Jatav voters. After Dalit voters in Awadh, there is a large number of non-Yadav OBC castes like Kurmi, Lodh. Kushwaha, Prajapati and Nishad voters.

There is also a population of 11 percent Brahmin and 8 percent Rajput community. While BJP and SP have taken more care of the equation of OBC castes in this region, BSP has focused on Dalit-Brahmin social engineering formula while selecting candidates.

Congress has relied more on women card. Earlier, BJP was planning to field new faces in many seats of Awadh, but later the party strategists, sensing the possible loss, dropped this idea. Political experts believe that the strength of BSP cannot be ignored in the region.