Allahabad, April 9: Mayavati is down but not out. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s up but only a little. The Congress has enough goodwill — in a zone historically unkind to the party — but has hardly anyone to harness it.

The BJP is back to playing divisive politics. But despite the belt’s reputation for communal volatility, it seems not to be working — nobody’s talking of Varun Gandhi.

Many analysts reckon the heartland will witness one of its most crucial phases of elections when the 27 constituencies in eastern Uttar Pradesh — the state’s largest cluster of seats — vote on April 16 and 23.

Most of the constituencies are bracing for a battle between the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party. Although the fight is draped in the rhetoric of Mayavati’s “betrayal” of her promises and Mulayam’s “political fickleness”, in reality it is about caste, as always.

Eastern Uttar Pradesh has been a cauldron of caste churnings — the Mandal movement had had its biggest impact here. It has also been a testing ground for caste-coalition experiments, such as the brief Samajwadi-BSP alliance in the early 1990s.

That Dalit-Backward-Muslim coalition, which swept Mulayam to power in the 1993 Assembly polls, had worked most successfully in this region but came apart when the BJP wooed Mayavati away.

In the 2007 state polls, another coalition experiment brought Mayavati big yields from the east and put her on the chief minister’s chair. In effect, Mayavati had simply re-invented the Congress’s winning Brahmin-Dalit-Muslim coalition with the Most Backward Castes shoring it up.

The formula is wearing away on the sides but the BSP’s Dalit base is intact, making Mayavati a formidable but not an unbeatable force.

Mulayam has infused life into his core Yadav following as the huge turnouts at his meetings testify. As in Mayavati’s rallies, it’s clear the crowds haven’t been “bought” — most arrive on foot or on rickshaws.

Mulayam has regrouped some of the influential backward castes, and is still the Muslims’ first choice. But he knows that while Mayavati starts the race with an 18-20 per cent committed Dalit votes, his Yadavs don’t necessarily obey his diktats.

A bellwether of Mayavati’s dipping graph was a sullen BSP worker, a Bania leader in Allahabad who had solicited traders’ votes for her in 2007.

“She said she would throw the criminals and mafia dons in jail and never give them tickets. But we have a gallery of celebrated jailbirds -- the Ansari brothers in the east to Anna Shukla in the centre to D.P. Yadav in the west.”

The Brahmins have their grouses too. For Umesh Mishra, a tempo driver of Soraon town, 20km from Allahabad, Mayavati’s move to open up the post of safai karamchari (municipal cleaner) to all castes was like “spitting on a Brahmin’s face”, notwithstanding the security of the Rs 8,000-10,000 monthly salary. “The Dalits look so elated each time they see one of us with a broom,” he said.

Union members alleged that most upper caste sweepers outsourced their jobs to Dalits and the backward castes for a 10 per cent cut from their salaries.

A.N. Tripathi, a Brahmin lawyer of Allahabad High Court, put the Mayavati-upper caste equation in perspective.

“Mayavati has given 20 tickets to Brahmins; every second minister in her cabinet is a Brahmin. The trouble is, our stomach is a bottomless pit.”

Most Brahmins, however, say neither the Congress nor the BJP looks a winner while Mulayam is “hated” more than Mayavati for “overtly pampering” the Muslims and the OBCs. Ironically, Mulayam is an unwitting beneficiary of his brief dalliance with the Congress and his professed support to the UPA.

Krishan Kant, a farmer in Haripur, Bhadohi Lok Sabha constituency, gushed about how he became a Congress bhakt after his loan was waived. “Unfortunately, the Congress is so weak that I can’t vote for it. But a vote for Mulayam means a vote for the Congress because I know he will be part of the UPA government after the polls,” he said.