Mirzapur sources have stated that at a pilgrimage site 45 kms from Allahabad, where, according to legend, the exiled Ram, Sita and Lakshman were given shelter by the Raja of the Nishads, the ghat or bank is choked with filth. "This is the Lok Sabha constituency of Keshav Prasad Maurya and our MLA is from the Samajwadi Party. But neither have shown any interest in removing the dirt," complain the villagers.
Allahabad has already voted, but nowhere are issues that concern people's lives more irrelevant to political parties than in the 17 districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh which vote on Saturday and then on Wednesday in the last two phases of this election. Here, only their caste matters.
In 2014, the BJP swept the region, largely due to the combined vote of the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) and Most Backward Classes (MBCs), who together add upto 40 percent of the region's population. Among them are the Yadavs, who support the Samajwadi Party (SP). It is the others, nearly 200 groups that are once again being targeted by the BJP.
But in 2017, apart from Mayawati's BSP and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's SP, a crop of freshly-minted caste-based parties are also hoping to split this vote. One such outfit is the Gorakhpur-based Nirbal Indian Shoshit Aam Dal, (NISHAD), led by Dr Sanjay Nishad, a former homeopath which claims to have the support of a large section of the Nishad community, around 2% of UP's population.
