Gathbandhan in UP

As expected SP-BSP have announced they will fight 38-38 in UP and 2 each they will leave for RLD and Congress. They are hoping for a simple mathematical calculation & think they will get something between 40-45% votes in UP LS elections.

Whenever I think about SP-BSP alliance my mind goes back to 2011-12 when I started taking interest in politics. 2012 UP election was primarily a contest between SP & BSP and the 1st news came out on news channels after SP's victory was "Dalit Huts" were burnt in the midnight after the election results were announced. Leaders and workers may forget these incidents because it's about their survival but can the common people forget & forgive these ? The answer is NO.

TAKE AWAYS FROM THE BY POLLS

The Gathbandhan got shaped after the successful experiment in Gorakhpur, Phoolpur and Kairana. In Gorakhpur & Phoolpur the voter's turnout was too low to come to any conclusion but Kairana was interesting though. Despite entire opposition coming together the victory margin for Tabassum Hasan was less than 45000 which is too low for LS seats.

In July last yr i was in Delhi one of my college friend from Shamli (Kairna) was in Delhi for his work his father in law is a member of RLD. We planned a get together with other college friends in Gurgaon.
One of them asked me "Bhatt ji kya lag raha hai is bar?".
I said " kuch nhi, 2024 tak to Modi hi hai"
Friend- " Kya bat kar rahe ho yar sab to mil gaye hain, kaise rahega Modi"

I said " Inke milne ka asar sirf tak hai. Baki jagah to sab same hi hai. UP me BJP shayad 40 se neeche rahegi or MP, Raj me thoda bahut loss hoga. But iski recovery ka jugad unhone Northeast ,Orissa & Bengal se pehle hi kar lia hai"

The friend from Shamli intervened "Bhatt ji agar sirf Kairana ki wajah se 40 de rahe ho to bada lo"
I asked curiously, " Why?"

He said "Yaha to is bar #GannaVsJinnah ho gaya tha, Ganne k paise diye nhi Yogi ne or poster chapwa diye. Ek bar sabak sikhana jaruri tha. Ab sab thik hai"

This coming from a relative of RLD member from Kairana is a big statement in my opinion.

Ideally I should have finished by now but two incidents in last two days urges me to write more.

PRIYANKA Factor
Some experts say Priyanka' entry will hurt BJP a lot. Their presumption is based on  a FUNNY theory that all MUSLIMS will still vote for the SP-BSP alliance only but a large chunk of Upper caste will go to the Cong now reducing BJP's vote share.

What I have seen in last 12-15 yrs is the upper caste has never voted as a vote bank especially the Brahmins on whom these experts are banking on. They have always voted for those whom they feel are best among available options for state as well as for the country. In 2007 they voted for Mayawati, 2009 due to the weak BJP leadership they voted for Congress, in 2012 they felt cheated by BSP and due to appeasement politlcies of Congress and weak leadership of BJP they had no other choice but SP. By 2014 they realised SP is worst when it comes to appeasement and they are with BJP since then. And as long as BJP puts nation first they aren't going to go anywhere else because they have seen the appeasement policies of other parties. 2017 UP elections is the prime example of this where the cong party made a SHIELA DIXIT their CM candidate but half way into the elections realised that it's not going help them and they decided to go with Akhilesh.I feel the MUSLIMS are more likely to break away from the alliance if the Cong comes out with a strong candidate in muslim majority area because they are the ones who are not happy with any of the 3 parties but going with them only due to the fear of BJP.

Recent surveys
Midway writing this article I came across opinion polls of C voter and Karvy where they are giving SP-BSP alliance 50+ seats and 75 seats if Cong also joins the Gathbandhan. They are saying 45%+ votes for the Gathbandhan and 55+% if Congress joins them which suggests that they are working with mathematical calculation only ignoring chemistry where not only the workers but voters of the two parties were thirsty for each other's blood. As I said workers may forget & forgive but will the voter ?? The answer is NO.

So the statement 40 se jyada bada lo coming from a Jaat living in Shamli whose father in law is in RLD forces me to say BJP is getting 50-60 seats in UP despite all types of Gathbandhan or Mahagathbandhan.

Thanks and Regards,

Himanshu Bhatt

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN DDCA IN ARUN JAITLEY' TENURE

I am writing this blog on ddca purely bcz of my love for cricket as i have been following it for last 20 yrs..from 1996 WC to be more precise. Yes the time when Team India was flooded with the Mumbaikars. The God Sachin TendulKAR, Manoj prabhakar, sanjay manjerekar, ajit Agarkar, salil ankola, abey kuruvilla, vinod kambli, neelesh kulkarni, wasim jafer,Sameer Sidhe all these played for team india during 1995-2000. 

If we talk about the duration between 1985-1996 again all we will see is Mumbaikars all over the team India. Sunil gavaskar, ravi shastri, vengsarkar, praveen amre, sachin, kambli, manjerekar were there in team. If we talk about past veenu mankad, vijay merchant, ajit vadekar, dileep sardesai, balvinder Sandhu, chandu borde , eknath solkar, pauli umrigar, farooq engineer. Frankly speaking i dont remember any delhi cricketer name representing team India except Madan lal and chetan chauhan.

Surprisingly all these players emerged to the national origin well before Jaitley took over as DDCA cheif. And we hardly remember any delhi based cricketer from the past. I don't want to go to the politics of the allegations but we need to see what actually happened in ddca to decide how was Arun Jaitley's tenure.

Let us see how many cricketers came to the national horizon in those 15 years of Jaitley tenure. 1)Veerendra sehwag (2001-02)was probably the first cricketing legend emerged from ddca. 2)Ashish nehra(2001-02) came to the side almost at the same time as veeru did. Veeru's long term opening partner in test Aakash Chopra(3) also came to the side in 2003. Amit mishra (4) made his debut in 2004 in bangladesh and so did Amit Bhandari (5) he couldn't become a regular though. Then came the time of renovation of DDCA so it couldn't produce much players till 2007. Although the fighting Gautam Gambhir(6) somehow managed to impress the selectors and became a regular by 2008. 2008 reminds me of the revival of Indian cricket and its emergence to the top of all three formats and the Delhi boys Veeru, Gauti and Ishant Sharma(7) played a vital role in this. Talking about ishant; who can forget his spell to Ricky Ponting in that 2008 Australian tour. In 2008 As Shikhar Dhawan (8) was toiling hard in domestic cricket another Delhi lad and DDCA product made news for all the good reasons. Virat Kohli(9) led India under'19 team to the wc triumph in 2008. And these were probably the best time of Indian cricket as team Indian ruled world cricket from September 2007 to april 2011. Team India won the t20 WC in 07, won under'19 WC in 2008, became no.1 test and one day side by the end of 2009 and remained at top till 2011 WC. Team India had as many as 4 DDCA products in WC'11 winning team with veeru, gauti,kohli and nehra all making important contribution in the triumph. In came 2012 and the under'19 WC also comes home with another DDCA product Unmukt Chand (10) leading the team.

So if we summarise it all we will see 10 DDCA cricketers made it to Team India in 13 years of Arun Jaitley's tenure more than any other state team. 3 out of last 4 of Team India's regular captains are from Delhi i.e. Veeru,Gauti, Kohli with MSD being the only Non Delhi Captain
4 out of last 5 of our regular test openers are also DDCA products i.e. Akash chopra, veeru, gauti and shikhar Dhawan
2 out of 3 of our under'19 WC winning captains are also from DDCA i.e. Virat kohli and unmukt chand with Kaif being the 3rd 

So Arun Jaitley actually did was he broke the monopoly of mumbai in team India with ddca and upca being the top two state boards considering the number of players making it to Team India. So Jaitley's tenure as DDCA president was more than awesome atleast from cricketing point of view.