A patchwork quilt
From prosperous paschim up to arid Bundelkhand, and Braj to Awadh, the six regions of Uttar pradesh, India's electoral bellwether, have a knotty caste dynamic, and send out contrary signals hard to decode in poll season. The 2014 election bucked this trend in its near-unanimous approval of Narendra Modi's BJP. But in 2019, given the gathbandhan,the state is back in its confounding element.
Paschim UP losing shine
BJP stronghold has to deal with upset Farmers, traders
This Khari Boli-speaking region consists of 10 Lok Sabha seats, all of which polled in the first two phases in April. West UP is a traditional stronghold of the BJP with the party averaging one-third of the votes polled since 1991. Between 1996 and 2014, the Samajwadi Party averaged 29 per cent and the Bahujan Samaj Party 21 per cent. In 2014, the BJP swept West UP with 48 per cent of the popular vote. In the 2017 assembly election, the BJP won three-quarters of the assembly seats in western UP.
West UP is dominated by Dalits, Muslims, Yadavs, Jats, Gujjars and upper castes. The Muslims make up 27 per
