Thread by @poojadesaid

2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly Polls — Seats Won

—BJP: 312
—SP: 47
—BSP: 19
—INC: 7
(SP-INC pre-poll alliance. Seat-sharing: SP contested 298 seats; Congress 105)

Total: 403 seats

https://twitter.com/SalilShetty/status/1484857822559223811

—47 of the 403 assembly constituencies in Uttar Pradesh were decided by victory margins of less than 5,000 votes
—Of these, BJP won the most, 23 (it came second in 15)
—SP won 13 (it came second in 17)
—BSP won 8
—INC won 1
—RLD won 1
—Apna Dal (Soneylal) won 1

—In 12 of these 47 constituencies (with victory margins below 5,000 votes), the winner was decided by a margin of 3,000-4,000 votes
—In 10 seats, the winning margin was 2,000-3,000 votes
—In 9 seats, 1,000-2,000 votes
—In 8 seats, the victory margin was less than 1,000 votes

—Of these 8 UP constituencies (where the winning margin was less than 1,000), BJP won 5 seats, BSP 2 seats and SP 1 seat
—BJP’s Raghvendra Pratap Singh defeated BSP’s Saiyada Khatoon in the Doomariyaganj seat, which saw the lowest victory margin in the state: just 171 votes

—Last year, with an eye to the 2022 elections in UP, Punjab and other states, several political parties (barring the BJP) had demanded a caste-based census and sub-categorisation of castes

—India’s last caste-wise enumeration was carried out in 1931

—Census 2021 was postponed until further orders due to Covid, the home ministry told Parliament in Dec 2021. It was previously extended from Dec 31, 2020 to Dec 21, 2021
—Registrar Gen of India and Census Commissioner wrote to states/UTs extending the date for changes to June-end

—Uttar Pradesh has at least 79 castes among Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and 66 scheduled castes (SCs) and sub-castes
—OBCs and SCs make up between 60 and 70% of UP’s population

—UP BJP’s ‘OBC exodus’ began with Swami Prasad Maurya—the influential OBC leader resigned as cabinet minister, quit BJP and joined SP
—With him, OBC leaders Dara Singh Chauhan and Dharam Singh Saini have also left BJP, joined SP
—Five years ago, the trio had left BSP to join BJP

All three of these UP OBC leaders—Maurya, Chauhan and Saini—were sitting ministers in the Yogi government
—Swami Prasad Maurya held labour portfolio
—Dara Singh Chauhan was forests minister
—Dharam Singh Saini was MoS (independent charge) Ayush, food security, drug administration

—BJP won the 2017 UP election with a large margin
—One of the reasons political analysts cited for its landslide victory was OBCs voting en masse for the saffron party