Uttar Pradesh is the heartland of Indian politics, sending 80 members to Parliament, the most of any state, and 403 to its own assembly, down from 85 and 425. 

About 250 million people live inside those numbers.

Congress ruled the state almost without interruption for decades. In 1984, it held 269 assembly seats and 84 parliamentary seats, and by 1989, after the locks of the Babri Masjid were opened in 1986 at its behest, those numbers had fallen to 94 and 15. 

Even the Emergency had cost less in parliamentary terms than this slide would: 47 seats and a zero in 1977, then a recovery. 

The 1989 fall had no recovery.

The old formula gave Dalits benefits, Muslims promises and Brahmins the chief ministership. OBCs never counted for much in it. 

Congress’s Kashmir Struggle

SP’s Nathwani Has ₹373 Cr Assets, ₹19.6 Cr Income

When V.P. Singh implemented the Mandal Commission report in 1990, those left out by the formula eventually became its biggest challenge. 

Sharad Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati were all OBC or Dalit, and each of them built a politics that Congress had no way to answer.

The BJP filled the vacuum on the other side of Mandal. It launched the Ram Mandir movement, used religion openly as an instrument, and watched riots follow riots until the mosque fell and, after a Supreme Court order, a........

© Kashmir Observer