When Sone Lal Patel founded Apna Dal in 1995, he must not have imagined that a little over two decades later, his daughter Anupriya Patel Singh would take the party forward and become a Union Minister. After all, let alone make a mark in national politics, the party had failed to register any real impact on its home ground in Uttar Pradesh during his lifetime. When he died in 2009, Apna Dal was at a crossroads, and even his committed supporters had begun to question Sone Lal Patel’s decision to part ways with the Bahujan Samaj Party after Kanshi Ram anointed Mayawati as the leader, and float an outfit that depended on the support of the Other Backward Class Kurmi community, to which he belonged.
But Patel had only followed in the footsteps of the two big regional leaders of Uttar Pradesh — Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati. While the former established the Samajwadi Party on the strength of the sizeable Yadav vote-bank, Mayawati and her Bahujan Samaj Party grew in stature riding on the Dalit votes. Sone Lal Patel calculated that, though relatively few in number, the Kurmi voters could provide him a similar springboard, and he could thereafter, like both Yadav and Mayawati did, draw in voters from other communities as he went along the political road. In those initial years, he miscalculated on at at least two counts. The first was that the Kurmi voter already had options in the form of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and even the Congress to a lesser extent. This, along with the realisation among his community voters that they would probably be wasting their vote if they cast it for Apna Dal candidates, prevented a consolidation of the Kurmi votes in his party’s favour. The second miscalculation was in embracing even dubious politicians in the desperate hope of broad-basing the new party’s support structure in the shortest possible time. For instance, infamous muscleman Atiq Ahmed got to contest as an Apna Dal candidate from Allahabad in the 2002 Assembly election. While Atiq Ahmed won, Sone Lal Patel and his party lost in public esteem across the State. Besides, the decision to award the ticket to the mafia don put off voters elsewhere in the State, who would have otherwise been sympathetic to the Apna Dal’s cause.
And from thereon, it was downhill for the party. The Apna Dal fared miserably in the 2007 Assembly poll and the 2009 Lok Sabha election. Sone Lal Patel himself could not win even from constituencies that had a sizeable number of voters (enough to influence the outcome) from the Kurmi community. It was this failed legacy that Anupriya Patel Singh inherited when she became active in the party after her father’s sudden death and when her mother Krishna Patel took charge of Apna Dal. The mother-daughter duo persisted with the experiment, sensibly concentrating on regions where they had the best chance to make a comeback. This was Allahabad, Pratapgarh, Mirzapur and Varanasi. The struggle bore fruit when Anupriya Patel Singh won from Rohaniya constituency in Varanasi in the 2012 Assembly election. This may well have turned out to be a flash in the pan, but for Apna Dal’s decision to tie up with a resurgent BJP for the 2014 Lok Sabha election. It contested two seats and won both — with Anupriya Patel Singh being one of the victorious candidates (from Mirzapur).
But just when it was time to celebrate, came bad news — and a fresh challenge — from within. Krishan Patel decided to clip the wings of her daughter. The cause of the rift (incidentally, Anupriya Patel Singh denies any division, to this date) is in the realm of speculation, but it is said that the mother was upset by alleged moves by her daughter’s camp to promote her son-in-law’s political ambitions. Things got so bad that the mother sacked her from the party general secretary’s post, and Anupriya Patel Singh put up a candidate against her mother in a 2014 by-election and successfully plotted her mother’s defeat. Apna Dal effectively split into two, with the newly inducted Union Minister claiming her group to be the ‘real Apna Dal’.
It will be interesting to see how quickly and effectively Anupriya Patel Singh rises above these dispute and moves on. As a Union Minister, and a young and very articulate politician, it’s her moment of glory. Perhaps Uttar Pradesh could see a lot more of her in the days to come.
(The writer is a senior journalist and commentator)
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