Can BJP’s Baby Rani Maurya Break Mayawati’sJatav Vote Base in All-Dalit Showdown in Caste-Centric Agra Rural?

PAROMITA DAS.

Agra Rural Assembly Seat: Agra Rural is an Uttar Pradesh assembly constituency. HemlataDiwakar of the BharatiyaJanata Party won the seat in 2017 by a margin of 65,296 votes over KalicharanSuman of the BahujanSamaj Party.

 This year’s Assembly Election will feature a four-cornered struggle between two men and two women candidates for the Agra Rural seat. While the BJP has Baby Rani Maurya on the ballot, the BSP has KiranPrabhaKesari, a Dalit female candidate, restricting the contest to two Dalit women. Upendra Singh is running for the Congress, while Mahesh Jatav is running for the Samajwadi Party.

Rani Maurya is the first Dalit woman to be elected mayor of Agra. This was accomplished in 1995. She later ran unsuccessfully for the BJP in the 2007 assembly elections from Agra’s Etmadpur constituency. She is the party’s national vice-president at the moment. Maurya is a member of the Jatav community, which is seen as the BSP’s “primary vote bank” by party leader Mayawati.

Agra Rural in a Nutshell

About 1.25 lakh Dalit electors live in Agra Rural, including Muslims, Yadavs, and Kushwahs. Because this is a reserved seat, all candidates are Dalit, hence Dalit voters will be the deciding factor in this election.

It’s worth noting that Dalits in Uttar Pradesh have a lot of clout in elections. They make up about 21.6 percent of the state’s population, which includes 66 castes. With a population of roughly 3.95 lakh, Jatavs are the second-largest (13.4 percent) ethnic group in Agra. According to data, Brahmins make up the largest voting bloc in the constituency, with 4.16 lakh voters (14.13 percent ).

Upendra Singh, Congress; Baby Rani Maurya, BJP; Mahesh Kumar Jatav, RLD; Upendra Singh, Congress; Upendra Singh, Congress; Upendra Singh, Congress; Upendra Singh, Congress; Upendra Singh, Congress;

Polling will take place on Thursday, February 10th, 2022.

Counting will take place on Thursday, March 10, 2022.

Uttar Pradesh’s Dalit capital is Agra.

The district of Agra, recognised as the state’s Dalit capital, contains nine assembly seats, two of which are designated for Scheduled Castes, namely Agra Rural.

Dalits as a whole were regarded the BSP’s vote bank until the 2017 elections. According to a post-poll survey done by India Today, the BJP received 17% of non-Jatav Dalit votes in 2017 (from sub-castes such as Valmikis, Pasis, and Khatik).

Elections in Uttar Pradesh are scheduled for 2022.

The election for the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly will be held in seven stages between February 10 and March 7.

On March 10, the results of the Uttar Pradesh elections in 2022 will be announced.

The first and second phases of voting will take place on February 10 and 14, respectively, on 58 assembly seats in 11 districts and 55 assembly seats in nine districts.

On February 20, voters in the third phase of the Uttar Pradesh election will cast ballots for 59 assembly seats in 16 districts. On February 23, voters will go to the polls for 60 assembly seats in nine districts in the fourth phase.

The fifth phase of voting will take place on February 27 for 60 assembly members in 11 districts.

The sixth phase of voting for 57 assembly seats in ten districts will take place on March 3.

On March 7, polling will take place in the seventh phase for 54 assembly constituencies distributed across nine districts.