Introduction
Even though the assembly
elections in Uttar Pradesh are still some months away, aggressive campaigning for
it, at least, by the BJP has begun in earnest. The Chief Minister of the state
has led the early charge with frequent so-called “impact features” on numerous
TV channels (Bajpai, 2021). Interviews of the Chief
Minister have been conducted on “friendly” channels. These elections have
assumed great significance given the humbling defeat that the BJP suffered in
West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. In 2017, the BJP was the challenger party in UP but is now the incumbent with all the attendant anti-incumbency disadvantages.
Add to that the serious misgivings with respect to handling the Covid
situation, the BJP may need to work doubly hard to retain its advantage in the
state (Ranjan et al, 2021). Of course,
voters in India are not known to have a long memory of their suffering and have
been willing to put their faith in Prime Minister Modi. Despite the immense
suffering caused by the demonetisation in 2016, voters rewarded the BJP with a
thumping majority in UP. It may not be that easy to deflect attention from the ravages
of Covid and, unless the BJP successfully diverts attention away from this
issue, it might face a backlash. This diversion has already begun with the announcement of
a population policy that “could propose to limit the benefits of state schemes
only to those with two children or less” (Shrivastava, 2021). India itself has had an
unfortunate experience with such coercive population policies during the Emergency
years and, hence, it is a surprise that such a policy is being revived. The
poster boy of such policies, China, has recently relaxed this policy after much
suffering. The film One Child Nation
(IMDB, undated; possibly, still available on Amazon Prime) exposes the
brutality of this policy in detail. Despite evidence that such coercive
population measures lead to much suffering (Göttmark, 2021), in UP, these will serve to move the discussion away from Covid-related criticism against the government.
This blog post does not dive into
any crystal-ball gazing about the likely outcome of the UP Assembly Elections:
there is much that can change over the next few months. Rather, I propose to
look back at the last two assembly elections in UP to highlight some of its
salient features. I look at all the candidates in the elections of 2012 and
2017 and try to draw out some statistical characteristics. All of the data that
I have used come from two sources: (1) Myneta.info (undated) (2) Bhogale et al (2019).
Distribution
of Seats
Table 1 provides a distribution
of seats won/lost/contested in 2012 and 2017.
Fig. 1 focuses on the wins of the major parties.
Table 1: Distribution of Seats
The
BJP was the challenger in 2017 having won only 47 seats in the 2012 elections
with barely 12% of the candidates that it fielded being successful. The
incumbent in 2017 was the Samajwadi Party (SP) which had secured 223 seats in
the 2012 elections. The tables were completely turned in 2017 with the BJP
winning 312 seats: a whopping 81% of the candidates that it fielded won. The SP
was reduced to just 47 seats with the INC and BSP failing to protect what they
had won in 2012.
Anti-incumbency
The anti-incumbency picture is starkly visible in Table 2.
Table 2: Anti-incumbency
In
2012, 109 of the 209 incumbents (37.5%) retained their seats. The anti-incumbency effect was very strong in 2017 and only 81 out of 317
incumbents (25.5%) retained their seats. This is, of course, candidate-level
incumbency. If one looks at the party-level incumbency we see a regular alternating of the ruling party: (a) BJP is
currently ruling during the course of the 17th Assembly (2017-2122)
(b) SP ruled during the 16th Assembly (2012-2017) (3)
BSP ruled during the 15th Assembly (2007-2012) (4)
BSP and SP ruled during the 14th Assembly (2002-2007) and (5) the
BJP and BSP ruled during the 13th Assembly (1996-2002) (Uttar
Pradesh Legislative Assembly, undated). This shows that no political party has
ruled the state for two terms at a stretch and the BJP will need to fight against
this long history in the forthcoming elections.
Male and Female Candidates
The number of women candidates fielded by the various parties has remained abysmally
low in both the elections. Table 3 gives the gender distribution of candidates.
Table 3: Gender Distribution
Overall,
women candidates accounted for just 8% of the total in 2012, which increased
marginally to 9% in 2017. BSP, despite being headed by a woman, has had the
fewest number of women candidates with the other three parties accounting for
similar percentages. Considering winning candidates, there were 33 (8% of 403)
winning women candidates in 2012 and 40 (10% of 403) in 2017
The Muslim population is almost 20% of UP’s total population (Census, 2011). Table 4 shows the distribution of
Muslim candidates across the major political parties. It may be noted that the
data sources I have used do not separate out candidates by religion. I have
identified Muslim candidates on the basis of their names. Of course, it is
difficult to be absolutely certain that a candidate’s religion has been correctly identified on the basis of name alone.
Table 4: Muslim Candidates
The BSP, INC, and SP are seen to be selecting Muslim candidates keeping in mind the share
of the Muslim population in UP. The position of the BJP is especially egregious. In 2012, it
selected a mere 2.6% of candidates who were Muslim and, in 2017, it did not see it fit to
select even one Muslim candidate (Times of India, 2017).
Winning
Muslim Candidates
Representation
of Muslims in the Assembly has remained below their share of population for quite some time in
UP. Table 5 gives information on winning Muslim candidates.
Table 5: Winning Muslim Candidates
2012
witnessed the highest ever share of Muslims in the Assembly of UP this was probably as close as it has ever got to the share of the Muslim population in the
state. However, 5 years later in 2017, this share had plummetted to just under
6%. This is the lowest it has reached since 1992 (Saldhana, 2017).
Assets of Candidates
As per the latest notification of the Law Ministry, the ceiling on expenditure for Assembly elections in UP is placed at Rs. 31 lakh (The Hindu, 2020). Studies have shown that the actual expenditure carried out by candidates is much in excess of what is permissible. For instance, “The legal expenditure limit for an assembly election in Mumbai in 2014 was Rs 35 lakh. Major contenders… spent between Rs 1 crore and Rs 16 crore…the legal and accounted expenses of candidates…represent...less than 1/30th or 1/50th of the overall amount” (Chauchard, 2018). It is not clear where the resources for the excess expenditures come from, but, certainly, having a large amount of personal assets would be an advantage. Table 6 gives details of assets of candidates
Table 6: Distribution of Candidates by Assets
The largest
number of candidates belong to the categories Assets-2, Assets-3 and Assets-4
for both the elections. In 2012, the modal asset code for SP was Assets-4 with
187 candidates while in, 2017, this same asset code was the mode for the BJP
with 196 candidates.
It is
interesting to see if the personal wealth of candidates translates into
victories. Table 7 gives some information.
Table 7: Distribution of Winners by Assets
82%
of the winning candidates came from the categories Assets-3 and Assets-4. In
2017, the numbers in the Assets-3 and Assets-4 category had fallen by 32% and
7%, respectively, while those in Assets-5 and Assets-6 had risen by 82% and 100%
respectively.
Criminal Cases
Vaishnav
(2012) argues that parties are attracted to
candidates with criminal records because they have access to independent
sources of wealth that allow them to function as self-financing candidates.
Aidt et al (2011) show that political parties are more likely to field
candidates with criminal charges when confronted with greater electoral
uncertainty. Table 8 now looks at the criminal cases associated with candidates
of different political parties.
Table 8: Criminal Cases facing Candidates
Expectedly, the largest number of candidates have no cases registered against them.
Significant changes from one election to the next are visible in the table above. The number of candidates
with 1-2 cases has declined in 2017 by 37% as compared to 2012; the numbers
with 3-4 cases have fallen by 31%; the number of those with 5 cases has remained
the same. But, it should be noted, the decrease has taken place generally in
the case of Other Candidates. For instance, the number of BJP, BSP, and SP
candidates with 1-2 candidates has risen by 47%, 43%, and by 8% respectively.
Does
criminality translate into success in elections? I can report that the number of
winners with no criminal case registered against them has risen from 220 in
2012 to 330 in 2017, an increase of 50%. Naturally, the number of winners with
at least one criminal case registered against them has dropped substantially.
Education
Table 9
reports the educational qualifications of the candidates in 2012 and 2017.
Table 9: Educational Qualifications of Candidates
The
percentages of candidates in each category reveal only minor changes over the
two elections. The largest change is that there were 2.41% more candidates with
post-graduate qualifications in 2017 as compared to 2012. Assuming a value of
7.5 years of education for those in the 5th-10th pass category, 12 years for 12th
pass, 15 years for Graduate, 17 years for Post-graduate and 21 years for
Doctorate, the weighted average of years of education in 2012 was 11.08 years
which has increased to 11.46 years in 2017, an increase of 3.4%. Among the
winners, the average years of education was 12.89 years in 2012 and 14.03 years
in 2017.
The final section of this note compares winners and losers on the basis of some of the characteristics that we have discussed above. We wish to examine if there is a
significant difference between the assets, the number of Criminal Cases, and educational
levels of those who won the elections in 2012 and 2017. Table 10 reports the
results of the Independent Samples T-test.
Table 10: Difference between and Winners and Losers
The
results of Table 10 tell us that:
1. The winners had Rs. 23 million more in assets in 2012 as compared to losers and
Rs. 43 million more in assets in 2017.
2. The winners had 1.12 more criminal cases registered
against them in 2012 and 0.71 more criminal cases in 2017
3. Winners had education levels above 12th pass
in 2012 and levels very close to graduation in 2017.
The
differences between the winners and losers were significant at the 1% level of significance.
Conclusion
If,
in West Bengal, the BJP wished to breach the TMC castle, in UP, it will want to
protect its own castle. Far too much is at stake for both Prime Minister Modi and
Chief Minister Aditynath to permit any weakening of their hold in the state. The
local elections that have taken place earlier this year have shown that the BJP
might have a fight on its hands with the Samajwadi Party claiming victory in the
Gram Panchayat elections (Indian Express, 2021) though the BJP won big in the Zila
Parishad chairman polls (Shah, 2021). Whether these elections show any pointers
to what is likely to happen in the Assembly elections is debatable. What is
quite certain is that the UP Assembly Elections will be highly contested and,
it will not be a surprise, if they are highly divisive.
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