Uttar Pradesh’s unfavourable comparison with Bihar is the result of an “urban and upper-caste bias”, said Shahid Siddiqui, a member of the Samajwadi Party, who is a member of parliament in India’s upper house (Rajya Sabha). “How come the moment a Yadav got voted out of Bihar, and a government supported by an upper-caste party took over, everybody started saying the problems (with Bihar) had vanished?” he asked. Nitish Kumar heads a National Democratic Alliance government in Bihar, which includes the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The four phases of voting that have already been completed in Uttar Pradesh have seen an average turnout of around 47.5%, lower than the 52% recorded five years ago during the last elections. One reason for this, according to Singh, is the profile of the chief ministerial candidates.
India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is investigating Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav for allegedly possessing assets disproportionate to his official sources of income. Yadav’s main rival and a leading contender for the chief minister’s job, Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Mayawati, is mired in the Rs175 crore-Taj Heritage Corridor project scam. As chief minister in 2003, she presided over the decision to grant contracts for a shopping mall and a tourist complex behind the Taj Mahal in violation of a Supreme Court order. And BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, Kalyan Singh, continues to be under the scanner for his alleged facilitation of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992, when he was chief minister. IIT Kanpur professor-turned-Ramon Magsaysay Award-winning social activist Sandeep Pandey, who runs Asha For Education, a voluntary organization, said the main problem was the “systematic loot of public money meant for development to fund politics”.
“The government is to blame”
The ruling Samajwadi Party refused to acknowledge any dissatisfaction among its electorate, while the opposition parties hold the government responsible for all that is wrong with Uttar Pradesh.
“In terms of development and law and order, UP ranks the worst in the country, not just worse than Bihar. But, yes, it’s true that Bihar had become a symbol of sorts for underdevelopment. And in that sense, UP is now in that situation,” said BSP’s national spokesperson, Sudhir Goyal.
“Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government is to blame for this. BJP’s Rajnath Singh (October-March 2002) also paid scant regard to development when he was chief minister,” added Goyal. “Mayawati, in all her three terms as chief minister (May 2002–August 2003 was her third term), paid ample attention to development.”
“There can be no denial that UP, under Mulayam Singh, has deteriorated to the same level as Bihar under Lalu Prasad’s reign. There are two basic manifestations which point to this similarity: the state of law and order and development. That is why, these issues have become the main issues in the ongoing elections,” said BJP’s spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
Rudy, however, said the situation had deteriorated only over the past five years, thereby absolving his party president, Rajnath Singh, who was the chief minister of UP until March 2002.