UP's new star caste

Every election in Uttar Pradesh springs a surprise by throwing up a new paradigm. In the 2007 assembly polls, Mayawati astonished everyone by bagging a majority on her own on the strength of a historic rainbow coalition that arched over the entire caste spectrum and rallied anti-Yadav forces behind her to oust Mulayam Singh's "goonda raj". Two years later, in Lok Sabha 2009, it was the Congress that dumbfounded pundits by coming second in a split verdict after Mayawati's dalit-Brahmin axis splintered. 

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