BJP steps up outreach to OBCs, Dalits with eye on Lok Sabha polls

OBC leader Om Prakash Rajbhar’s entry into the BJP’s camp underscores the ruling party’s assiduous efforts to bolster its presence among disadvantaged castes in the Hindi heartland at a time when the Opposition has seized on a host of issues, including OBC census, to corner it in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. With the main opposition party Congress joining several regional parties to push for caste census as part of wider efforts to increase the OBC reservation and project the BJP as inimical to their interests, the ruling party has been making sharp counter-moves. The central government has so far maintained a studied silence on the demand for a census of Other Backward Classes, who are the largest voting bloc and have shown in polling booths an increasing preference for the ruling party under Prime Minister Narendra Modi since 2014. A host of leaders representing smaller parties and identified mostly with a particular backward or Dalit caste have gravitated, mostly from the Opposition, to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in recent months as the ruling party bolsters a flank where it has appeared to be vulnerable at times.
In Uttar Pradesh, which has been a BJP stronghold since 2014, Rajbhar joins OBC leaders like Sanjay Nishad, who enjoys influence among boatmen and fishermen communities, and Union minister Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal (Soneylal), a party with support mostly among backward Kurmis. While Nishad had aligned his ‘Nishad’ party with the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Patel has been a BJP ally since 2014. In neighbouring Bihar, Kushwaha leader Upendra Kushwaha and former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, whose Manjhi community is part of Dalits, have left the RJD-JD(U)-Congress-Left alliance.
Manjhi has already joined the NDA while Kushwaha has also had several meetings with senior BJP leaders. The BJP is also making determined efforts to bring Chirag Paswan, whose Lok Janshakti Party (R) enjoys the support of Paswans, the most numerous Dalit community in Bihar, back into its camp. While the BJP has been a surpassingly dominant political force in UP since Modi led the party to its maiden Lok Sabha majority in 2014, the Samajwadi Party managed to dent it in the ‘poorvanchal’ region by aligning with the likes of Rajbhar and a rival faction of Apna Dal in the 2022 assembly polls.