Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election, 2007

Background

With 166 million people, U.P. is about the size of France, Germany, and the Benelux nations combined. There are 113 million voters, and 403 electoral seats, with an average of a quarter of a million voters in each constituency. The elections were conducted for 403 seats at 110,000 polling stations under very strict guidelines by the autonomous Election Commission of India. More than 46% of the electorate cast their votes.

Schedule

The election was held in seven phases:

Parties

A total of 129 parties fielded 2,487 candidates, while 2020 candidates stood as independents, for the total of 406 seats.

List of winners

This is the list of winners consolidated from the Election Commission of India party-wise results pages (ECI website).

Criminalisation in the U.P. 2007 elections

The number of criminal-politicians participating in the elections have been growing, particularly because they have been successful in the past. In the U.P. Assembly elections, 2002, candidates with criminal records won 206 out of 403 seats in the assembly, i.e. more criminals were elected than regular politicians.

In 2007, the participation by criminals increased significantly. Prior to elections, 74% more criminal politicians were given tickets by the mainstream parties (Source: UP Election Watch, independent NGO headed by ex-DIG Ishwar P. Dwivedi):

1. Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP): 36.27%
2. Samajwadi Party (SP): 27.01%
3. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP): 23.05%
4. Indian National Congress (INC) : 21.60%

The Election Commission of India, the autonomous body charged with conducting elections, was facing intense media pressure to check criminalization related irregularities in the electoral process. Extremely strict measures were enforced, bringing in 639 companies of paramilitary forces to prevent musclepower effects. Any deviations from prescribed norms led to candidates being debarred. To help manage the situation, elections were held in seven stages.

At least six candidates campaigned from jails, broadcasting live speeches through illegal mobile phones smuggled into their jail cells while jailors looked the other way.

However, partially owing to the strict measures adopted during elections, only 100 persons with criminal records won the elections (as opposed to 206 in the previous elections). These include the elected Chief Minister Mayawati, who is facing embezzlement charges stemming from the Rs.175 crore (USD 40 million) Taj Corridor Case, the leader of the opposition Mulayam Singh Yadav, and other ganglords and hardened criminals (see Criminal-Politicians below). In many of these instances, opposition campaigners did not feel safe enough to put up a vibrant campaign, and in some situations, the mainstream parties reached alliances with the criminals and did not put up serious competition (e.g., Mukhtar Ansari). However, to some extent, these victories may also reflect a perception that these criminal politicians are able to deliver some level of well-being to their communities.

For example, the Soraon Assembly constituency in Allahabad district is one where all 11 candidates in the fray had criminal cases pending against them. Here Mohd. Mustaba Siddiqi of the Bahujan Samaj Party (38280 votes, 29.41%) defeated Mohd. Ayub of the Samajwadi Party (32739/25.15%).

Samajwadi Party

Despite Mukhtar's muscle power however, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Vijay Pratap managed to garner 42% of the vote, and Mukhtar won by seven thousand votes (47%) only Currently lodged at Gorakhpur Jail, where his case might take a long time to come to trial. He won the Lakshmipur Constituency seat in Gorakhpur District by a margin of nearly 20 thousand votes (12%).

Bahujan Samaj Party

Out of 19 ministers of state in the Mayawati cabinet, eight have violent criminal charges pending against them.

Rashtriya Parivartan Dal

Rashtriya Lok Dal

Apna Dal/Bharatiya Janata Party

A number of other criminal politicians mentioned in the press, such as the new bandit queen Seema Parihar, wife of the slain dacoit Nirbhay Gujjar, do not appear on the candidate lists, and may have been removed due to irregularities in their nomination papers or otherwise.

Election result

Exit polls suggested that the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) may emerge as the largest party with between 110 and 160 seats; however, it far outstripped this prediction collecting an absolute majority of 206 seats out of a total 403 in the assembly. In contrast, Samajwadi Party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress were reduced very significantly.

These elections were another major example of the pollsters getting it wrong at Indian Elections. In a similar pattern to the 2004 General Elections. The pollsters overpredicted the votes of the BJP.

The results by party are as follows:

Defections

The BSP had won 98 seats in the last elections, but 33 MLAs defected to the Samajwadi Party in 2003, in a move that may have been illegal but was permitted by the then speaker Kesri Nath Tripathi.

Blanked out

In addition, 116 parties fielded candidates but failed to win a seat. The parties with more than 50 candidates fielded without outcome are:

However, it is likely that some of these parties may have taken away votes from other groups; e.g., Uditraj's Indian Justice Party has a good standing among Dalits who also constitute an important chunk of the BSP vote bank.

Rainbow coalition

A characteristic of the BSP win was the amalgamation of Brahmin votes into the Dalit dominated party, an approach that has been called the rainbow coalition. This is in contrast to the decades-old trend of exploiting deep-rooted caste divisions in the state between Dalits, Upper Castes, Muslims and different OBC groups, which tend to vote in blocks.