From vote banks to kingmakers

Around 8.30 p.m. on a wintry January evening, Dinesh Mohaniya, 47, a three-time MLA and former vice chairman of the Delhi Jal Board, alights gingerly from a bike in Sangam Vihar’s Gali No. 1. Despite the chill and the rigours of the campaign trail, the politician from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) does not come by car — the density and magnitude of the potholes are such that entry on a four-wheeler is not an option.

But for the residents in what is one of Asia’s largest resettlement colonies, potholes are not their biggest problem. They were used to worse in their villages in Purvanchal, one of India’s most underdeveloped regions, which extends across eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Jharkhand.

Poverty, dwindling returns from landholdings, and scarcity of jobs had forced the people of Purvanchal to look beyond their villages for a livelihood. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, many set out for India’s national capital, when opportunity beckoned in the form of construction work for the 1982 Asian Games and factory jobs in the Okhla Industrial Area.

Once in Delhi, the prized combination of readily available work and an easy commute made them stay on and build their lives and homes here. And today, as it happens every time Delhi has an election, the migrants from Purvanchal find themselves courted by political parties and wooed as ‘kingmakers’.

There is no official data on the number of Purvanchali voters in Delhi. But internal surveys of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and AAP indicate that out of the 70 Assembly seats, 51 have a significant Purvanchali population. In 27 seats, 50% of the voters are from Purvanchal, meaning if they voted as a bloc, they may well decide the final outcome of the election.

‘Do kings live like this?’

Vinod Jha, 57, a vendor of home-made pickles and spices, is a native of Bihar’s Buxar district. He moved to Sangam Vihar in 1985 and has seen it evolve over the years — from being a swathe of agricultural land owned by Gujjars to an unplanned yet vibrant locality housing a sizeable chunk of the city’s working classes. He is not unhappy with all the attention Purvanchalis are getting from political parties. “They say we are kingmakers,” Jha says. “But do you think kings live the way we do in Sangam Vihar? We are just a vote bank they are trying to woo.”

Jha owns a modest two-storey house built on a plot of 50 gaj (square yards) in Sangam Vihar’s Mangal Vihar area, where the dust and the stench of wet waste force passers-by to cover their faces. His ground floor goes under water every time it rains for more than half an hour. “Drinking water and sanitation remain the biggest issues for voters in this area,” he says.

Mohaniya, who has come to address a nukkad sabha (neighbourhood meeting) as part of his campaign, stands beside a pile of filth recently dredged from a sewage drain. In his speech, conscious that the political tactic of pandering to Purvanchali pride could mute his party’s messaging around service delivery, he issues a warning: “Jaise jaise chunav aayega, logon ko dharam, jati, aur kshetra yaad aayega… magar aapko isme nahi fasna hai (As elections approach, people will remind you of religion, caste, and region… but don’t fall into this trap).”

But for Neelu Chaudhary, 33, a homemaker and native of Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, Purvanchali identity matters. Dressed in a cotton sari of bright saffron, she has walked 3 km to attend a roadshow of BJP MP and Bhojpuri film star Manoj Tiwari, who was campaigning for the BJP candidate from Sangam Vihar, Chandan Chaudhary, 44. “Delhi never considered us its own. We have faced discrimination from the beginning. They hire us as drivers, cleaners, and cooks. But when it comes to giving us equal space and rights, we are ‘outsiders’. It’s good that at least the politicians have realised Purvanchalis cannot be neglected anymore,” says the resident of Sangam Vihar.

 BJP MP Manoj Tiwari during a jansabha in support of a party candidate.
| Photo Credit:
SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA

Chandan is a native of Khagaria, Bihar, and councillor from ward 163 of the Sangam Vihar Assembly seat. In his campaign spiel, he assures the assembled crowd that he will solve all their problems. “I know my Bihari brothers are struggling here. I am here to solve all your problems. My Purvanchali brothers will get their rights in Delhi as well as in Sangam Vihar.” Chandan concludes with a promise, “If voted to power, the BJP will bring U.P.-like governance to Delhi.”

As it winds its way through Sangam Vihar, the BJP’s roadshow, led by Tiwari and Chandan, blasts popular Bhojpuri numbers. As it crosses Faheem’s Mutton Shop, the Bhojpuri hit ‘Aye raja ji’ playing on the giant speakers of the open jeep is drowned in loud chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’.

Mohaniya professes scepticism about Chandan’s approach. “The Purvanchalis will refuse to accept the demographic politics played by Chandan and others,” he says. However, with campaigning heating up, his party is taking care to acknowledge their uniqueness.

In multiple rallies, AAP national convener and former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has made targeted appeals to Purvanchalis, beseeching them to vote for his party yet again, as they did in 2015 and in 2020. “You come here to work hard and earn a living. Your first address in the Capital is usually a JJ [jhuggi-jhopdi — hutment] colony. AAP has done a lot of work for you, from laying sewer lines to building roads. A lot still needs to be done,” he said.

He has repeated that it was due to AAP’s various schemes — free electricity, free water, improved schools, better health care — that the migrants from Purvanchal were able to save money at a time of rising inflation. “I will take care of your children by providing them with quality school and college education. In the next five years, we will provide them employment as well,” Kejriwal said, in what has been a refrain in his campaign speeches.

Invoking Chhath Puja and Yamuna

Shedding light on the emergence of the term ‘Purvanchali’, Kumar Sanjay Singh, Associate Professor of Modern History at Swami Shraddhanand College, says the word, derived from the term denoting the region covering eastern U.P. and Bihar, also connotes a cultural-linguistic demographic that speaks different versions of the Bhojpuri language, enjoys similar dishes such as litti chokha, and celebrates similar festivals like Chhath Puja.

“People of this part of the country wanted a separate State for themselves soon after Independence. But they failed in the face of the larger linguistic demarcation of Hindi as most of the population was Hindi-speaking,” Singh explains. “When they moved to bigger cities like Delhi and Mumbai in search of livelihood, they lived in ghettos, partly because it gave them a sense of security. But the people of Purvanchal were vibrant enough to create political space for themselves no matter where they moved.”

When the promise of freebies are felt to be inadequate or lacking in credibility, political parties in Delhi have a second line of messaging: invoking Purvanchali sentiments linked to Chhath Puja, a festival dedicated to the sun god and their revered river, the Yamuna.

The BJP’s campaign videos, for instance, feature devotees bathing in the toxic foam of the Yamuna during Chhath. U.P. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who has lived in Gorakhpur since his teens, said at a recent rally at Mangolpuri Assembly constituency in Delhi, a Purvanchali-dominated seat, that the Yamuna, once a symbol of religious faith, smells like a sewer in Delhi.

He reminded people of Kejriwal’s promise that he would clean it by 2025. “The Maha Kumbh is going on and I took a dip in the Ganga. Can Kejriwal take a dip along with his Cabinet colleagues in the Yamuna, which he has turned into a dirty drain?” Adityanath asked rhetorically in his campaign speech.

BJP MP from Gorakhpur Ravi Kishan at a public meeting in support of Shweta Saini, the party’s candidate from Tilak Nagar constituency.

BJP MP from Gorakhpur Ravi Kishan at a public meeting in support of Shweta Saini, the party’s candidate from Tilak Nagar constituency.
| Photo Credit:
SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR

Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav responded with a counter. “Would you dare sip water from the Yamuna in U.P.?” he said. The SP, though a member of the INDIA bloc, has distanced itself from the Congress and decided to back AAP in the Delhi election.

As for the Congress, it has not shied away from Chhath politics either. The party has promised that it would organise the festival in Delhi on the scale of the Maha Kumbh currently taking place in U.P. It has also promised to build a ‘Chhath Ghat’ in the name of famous Bhojpuri singer Sharada Sinha, who passed away in 2024 and was conferred with the Padma Vibhushan posthumously by the BJP-led Union government.

Besides, it has gone one step beyond the offerings of the BJP and AAP and promised to set up a full-fledged Purvanchal Ministry with a special provision in the budget for the welfare of the people from Purvanchal.

Saloni Singh, 24, a resident of Mangolpuri, runs a beauty parlour. A native of U.P.’s Basti district, she has been a beneficiary of every one of AAP’s welfare measures. “Just giving our singer a Padma award and running campaign songs in Bhojpuri won’t help the BJP,” she says. “The party needs to contest Delhi with promises of development like AAP,” she says.

The class divide in political preferences emerges in a conversation with Shashi Agarwal, in her late 40s, who has turned up at Saloni’s beauty parlour for a haircut. Born and brought up in Delhi, with no Purvanchali heritage, Agarwal believes that freebies alone cannot bring development to Delhi. “Free power and water are a temporary relief. But if we want the country to compete with the world, everyone must vote for the BJP,” she says.

Seeking Purvanchali faces

The power of the Purvanchali vote first became a talking point when AAP rode to power in 2015 with many Purvanchali faces, including Sanjeev Jha, the MLA from Burari in north Delhi, who has been winning the constituency since 2013.

The BJP was quick to catch on. With the Delhi unit in seeming need of an overhaul, it roped in Tiwari, the Bhojpuri actor-turned-politician, to lead the party. The impact of Purvanchali voters has only increased over the last decade. Tiwari became the only sitting MP in Delhi to be given a ticket by the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha poll, and he managed to hold on to his seat too.

This year, the BJP has given tickets to five Purvanchali candidates in the Capital. It has allotted one seat each to its NDA allies from Bihar — the Janata Dal (United) and the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) — which have fielded candidates in Burari and Deoli, respectively. AAP this year has fielded 12 Purvanchali faces.

Kamal Kishore Yadav, 62, a native of Gonda in U.P., moved to Burari in 1992 when he got a job at a factory. He has plenty of grievances. “They have built the main roads but there are no roads in the interiors of Burari,” he says. “The drinking water is so contaminated that it looks like sewage water. We buy water in bottles.”

But his biggest grouse is that AAP has “hurt the sentiments” of Purvanchalis. “They have called us fake voters. This will dent their chance to form the government in 2025,” he says. Kejriwal had accused the BJP of manipulating electoral rolls by registering a large number of “fake voters” from U.P. and Bihar. He has claimed that the BJP twisted his words to falsely imply that he had insulted Purvanchali sentiments.

AP leader Sanjay Singh interacts with voters

AP leader Sanjay Singh interacts with voters
| Photo Credit:
SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP

For all his complaints though, Kamal is clear that he will vote for the AAP candidate as he believes that the JD(U) candidate, Shailendra Kumar, is hardly campaigning, content to bank on the BJP’s popularity. In Burari, the JD(U) posters say ‘Kamal hi teer hai; teer hi kamal hai (The lotus is the arrow and the arrow is the lotus)’. Arrow is the election symbol of the JD(U).

Satish Singh, 37, who hails from Ballia in eastern U.P., has been a resident of Burari Assembly constituency since 2000. He feels political parties have reduced Purvanchalis to vote banks by offering freebies like free power, water, and bus rides while ignoring their economic concerns. While the school buildings are fancy, the quality of education is subpar, he says. “So, with AAP’s freebies, we will be able to save money. But how we will earn is a question that no one is talking about,” Satish says.

Professor Singh feels the economic concerns of Purvanchalis may continue to remain neglected until the community throws up a prominent face in politics. “In Delhi, AAP has Sanjay Singh, the BJP has Tiwari, and the Congress has Kanhaiya Kumar. But all three are from Bihar. They were born and brought up in Bihar,” he says.

“The people of Purvanchal need a leader whose roots are in Bihar but who is a native of Delhi. Just like leaders such as Sanjay Nirupam and Baba Siddiqui in Maharashtra.”