Jagdish Kumar, a politically conscious Jatav youth of Shahpur in Mathura, gets angry when a Jat youth of his village tells him that the Bahujan Samaj Party has become a spent force and backing it will mean wasting a vote.

“You may think so but for me the BSP is my party. Our people will press the elephant button again, win or lose,” Jagdish replies. The elephant is the BSP’s election symbol.

He taunts the Jat youth, Monu Chaudhary, for his wavering devotion. “Like you, we don’t change our loyalty,” Jagdish says, pointing to how the Jats had backed the BJP in the last polls and are supporting the RLD, a party of agrarian Jats, this time.

The loyalty of the Jatavs towards the Mayawati-led BSP looks intact across several other villages spread over Hathras, Aligarh and Bulandshahr districts that vote in the first phase on February 10.

This Uttar Pradesh Assembly election is being widely seen as a bipolar contest between the ruling BJP and its allies and the challenger Samajwadi Party and its partners. The BSP, which once used to be a dominant political force in the state, attaining majority on its own in 2012, stands relegated to the margins since the rise of the BJP post-2014.

In many quarters, Mayawati is even being accused of striking a deal with the BJP and playing an indirect aide by splitting the anti-BJP votes. The allegation has gained currency in several constituencies where the BSP has put up strong Muslim candidates, who are expected to split the minority votes to the advantage of the BJP.

The BSP’s core Jatav voters, driven by an unflinching sense of proprietorship, are not ready to buy this argument. They realise their party is down but don’t believe it lies vanquished even before the contest.

“We have to keep our party alive and kicking. Who will vote for the BSP if we don’t?” says Bablu Jatav of Baigrai village in Aligarh.

Dalit or Schedule Caste voters constitute almost 23 per cent of Uttar Pradesh’s electorate. Nearly 60 per cent of these are Jatavs, a sub-caste that has strong presence in western Uttar Pradesh that votes in the first two phases.

Since 2014, the BJP has been relentlessly chipping away at non-Jatav Dalits and non-Yadav OBCs, tapping into allegations of the two dominant castes (Jatavs and Yadavs) cornering the benefits of power.

As the Jatavs have traditionally backed the BSP and the Yadavs the Samajwadi Party, the Jats for a long time regarded the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) as their party till the BJP used the 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal riots to win over the community. Jats are mostly vegetarian and socially right of centre, thereby gelling well with the BJP’s Hindutva push.

In this election, facilitated primarily by the sustained farmers’ protest against the three now-scrapped farm laws, most Jats seem to be returning to the RLD fold to keep “their party” alive and strong. The RLD has aligned with the Samajwadis in this election.

Still, neither the Yadavs nor the Jats have been able to match the kind of loyalty the Jatavs have for the BSP.

“We have been trying to convince them (the Jatavs) that if they want to defeat the BJP, they have to vote for the SP-RLD alliance,” Monu Chaudhary, the Jat youth, says. “But they are not ready to understand. Their obsession with the elephant is mind boggling.”

The BJP managers on the ground have been trying hard to woo the Jatavs, telling the community’s voters that they will be the worst sufferers if the SP-RLD combine comes to power.

Jatavs in many villages say Dalit BJP leaders have been approaching them with the claim that only that party can protect them from the Yadavs and the Jats, now that Mayawati is no longer a significant political force.

“Some local BJP leaders had come here the other day. They had dinner with us and tried hard to convince us that the BSP was no longer a force to reckon with and so we should vote for the BJP,” says Jagat Ram, an elder of Mohkampur village in Aligarh.

“They also told us how Modiji has ensured free rations for us and also got toilets built for us. But they (the BJP) don’t realise that the BSP has given us much more,” he adds, underlining the importance of the “respect and dignity” the Dalit assertion led by Kanshi Ram and Mayawati imparted to the socially marginalised sections.

Electorally, the loyalty of the Jatavs for the BSP should be seen as a good sign for the SP-RLD. Given the history of rivalry with the SP and the OBC Yadavs, many had felt that the Jatavs could gravitate towards the BJP, realising that the BSP can’t win.

“Jatavs are politically very conscious. They understand that the BJP is a bigger enemy for them and so we are hopeful that in many constituencies they will vote tactically,” an SP election manager said.

In the last Lok Sabha polls the SP and the BSP had joined hands, burying their old rivalry. This had seen the OBC Yadavs and the Dalit Jatavs coming together. Their combined power, however, couldn’t stop Narendra Modi’s BJP. Now the two parties have parted ways. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, like the BJP, is trying to woo the Jatavs by highlighting the need for “socialists and Ambedkarites” to come together to “save” B.R. Ambedkar’s Constitution from the BJP.

In some places, Jatavs could heed the call by Akhilesh but by and large the socially and politically empowered Dalits look firmly tied to the BSP and its elephant symbol.