With the Election Commission of India on Saturday announcing dates for assembly polls in Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh (UP), people of these states are gearing up to elect a new government. Barring Punjab, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be out to retain power with stakes remaining highest in UP.

Over the past seven decades, this will be the first occasion when the BJP will be entering the fray with its government in the saddle. In 1993 and 2002, the state went to polls under President’s Rule imposed after the tenure of the governments of Kalyan Singh and Rajnath Singh, respectively, was truncated.

From the time of first elections in 1952 until 1967, politics in the state remained centred around the Congress party. It entered a turbulent phase when regional and other parties/leaders opposed to the Congress joining hands to hold office intermittently until the 1980s after which the Congress made a comeback twice, and held office for nearly a decade until 1989.

UP remained a cauldron of caste politics and post-1989, it turned a hotbed of what was characterised as the Mandal-Kamandal politics –a fierce tussle between competing ideologies, with one set of parties advocating a greater share of power for the numerically superior underprivileged classes and the BJP pushing the Hindutva/Ram Temple issue occupying increasingly greater portion of political space.

This phase lasted until the turn of the 21st Century and now a blend of caste/sub-castes and community combinations took deeper roots with most parties working on a 'catch all social engineering' formula. This resulted in the state returning to a predominantly single-party government.

Interestingly, since 1952, only three of 21 chief ministers completed a full tenure and all of them did so in the last 15 years starting with Mayawati (2007-12), Akhilesh Yadav (2012-17) and Yogi Adityanath (2017-till date). Another fact is that Mayawati is the second woman after Sucheta Kriplani (1963-67) to be the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

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The initial Congress era

Having been in the vanguard of the country’s freedom struggle, the Congress party and its representatives were voted to majority in the state as much as to Parliament, elections to which were held simultaneously. Gobind Ballabh Pant, who was heading the provincial government, became the Chief Minister, a position he held until 1954, when he was inducted into the central government as the Union Home Minister. His replacement Sampurnanand continued to serve for five years in two spells (1954-57, 1957-1960). An internal power struggle led by Kamlapati Tripathi brought Chandra Bhanu Gupta to the helm that retained office after 1962 polls but could not retain beyond a year making way for Sucheta Kriplani, wife of Acharya J B Kriplani.

By the time 1967 elections came, the country had entered a post-Nehru/Lal Bahadur Shastri phase in Indian politics and it naturally cast a shadow in Uttar Pradesh, a state that sent the Prime Ministers. The changing landscape translated into a phase of uncertainty as the Congress fell short of majority in the then 425-seat assembly and the emergence of Chadhury Charan Singh who floated his Bharatiya Kranti Dal. Associating with Bharatiya Jana Sangh on one side and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on the other, Charan Singh became the Chief Minister of the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal coalition government. It has the support of parties like the Republican Party, the Swatantra Party and the Praja Socialist Party besides over a score of Independents.

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The decade between 1967-1977 and three assembly elections (4th, 5th and 6th) was a period of political instability with parties pulling in different directions. The state alternated between the coalition/Congress government, with President’s Rule on four occasions and eight Chief Ministers including Chandra Bhanu Gupta and Charan Singh in office, twice, reflecting the trend.

Meanwhile, the altering power structure in the Congress too was playing out with Indira Gandhi seeking to carve out a niche for herself. In the process, Kamlapati Tripathi became an important figure in the state politics, stirring the pot in the battle Indira Gandhi waged against the old guard in the Congress. In this battle for power, on one occasion the Congress (Organisation) got the better of Indira Gandhi and managed to have Tribhuvan Narain Singh as the Chief Minister with the assistance of Samyukta Vidhayak Dal only to be outflanked within five months. Kamlapati Tripathi assumed office for over two years starting 1971.

Over the next two years, the domination of upper caste Brahmin leaders in Congress continued. This time in the form of two successive Chief Ministers, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna from Garhwal and Narain Dutt Tiwari from Kumaon region of what is now Uttarakhand. Post 1980, Tiwari also held the distinction of being the last Congress Chief Minister between 1985-89 after which the party could never come to power in UP.

The 1977-1980 Janata Party government

The Janata Wave that swept through swathes of large parts of the country in the post-Emergency era and advent of Morarji Desai government saw the end of the Congress Chief Minister. Its government under Tiwari was dismissed on the grounds of loss of popular support post the 1977 general elections. After a brief spell of President’s Rule, the Janata Party came to power under Ram Naresh Yadav who assumed office as the coalition overcame internal tug-of-war between the socialist factions. The Jana Sangh component included both Kalyan Singh and Keshari Nath Tripathi while Mulayam Singh from the Janata camp was in the government. The return of the Congress under Indira Gandhi in 1980 at the Centre returned the Janata Government compliment by cutting short the life of the 7th Assembly.

Congress sun sets after a decade

The party under Indira Gandhi regained power in the state and had a succession of four Chief Ministers in Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Sripati Mishra, Narayan Dutt Tiwari and Vir Bahadur Singh. The ground had begun shifting. Representatives of the social combination who were in office during the Janata Party government began to claim space and the decision of the National Front Government at the Centre under V P Singh to implement the Mandal Commission providing for reservation for Other Backward Classes, widened the gap. On the other hand, the Bharatiya Janata Party under Lal Krishna Advani embarked on the Rath Yatra resulting in a confrontation and injected a new dynamic in Indian politics of Mandal and Kamandal.

(To be continued)

— KV Prasad is a senior journalist and has earlier worked with The Hindu and The Tribune. The views expressed are personal.

Read his other columns here

First Published:Jan 10, 2022 1:31 PM IST