If this demand is ignored for far too long, the issue might snowball into something on the lines of the Telengana agitation. Already, bar councils across the length and breadth of the region have been issuing strike calls on an almost weekly basis, stressing the need for a separate High Court Bench (just to put things in perspective – Madhya Pradesh which has less than half the population of UP has three benches – a principle bench in Jabalpur and two others in Gwalior and Indore.)

Politically also this might suit the government of the day. The SP is sure to protest such a move because this region is not its stronghold and just like Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal lapsed into irrelevance in Jharkhand, it is likely to lapse into irrelevance in the proposed Harit Pradesh except for the small pockets of Ruhelkhand, where Azam Khan still holds sway.

There would also be a lot of goodwill generated for the ruling party which shall surely place it in an advantageous position at least in the next couple of elections. If it can also enter into a strategic alliance with Ajit Singh of Rashtriya Lok Dal and his sure to be grateful Jat voters, there is no doubt that it shall dominate the politics of this region for years to come.

The second region that warrants discussion is the drought-prone Bundelkhand. The better portion of the region falls in present day Madhya Pradesh but the seven districts that lie within the boundary of Uttar Pradesh are Jhansi, Jalaun, Hamirpur, Mahoba, Banda, Chitrakoot and Lalitpur. The population of this region is around 2.5 crore, according to latest census figures. The separate statehood movement for Bundelkhand has been gaining some traction with Bollywood actor Raja Bundela being one of its prime movers. As a matter of fact, a political party called the Bundelkhand Mukti Morcha was also formed by him and a few of his associates. It contested the 2012 assembly elections but could not make much headway.

The grievances of this region are a mirror image to those of Western Uttar Pradesh. The politicians of the state are blamed for not paying adequate attention to the peculiar needs of this human resource rich but impoverished landmass that forms a bridge between the great Himalayan river fed plains of the north and the Vindhya Mountain range that roughly divides the northern part of the country from the southern. The pre-eminent political party of this region is Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party and even at the height of the Narendra Modi wave in 2014, it managed to finish second in many assembly segments. More importantly, the intermediate landowning semi dominant caste in this region is Kurmi – who have traditionally been voters and supporters of the BJP. If at all there is a separate Bundelkhand it is more than likely that the BJP and BSP shall be the biggest gainers and the Samajwadi Party shall be weakened considerably as its yeomen farmer caste vote shall get transferred to the BJP.

Finally, if one were to take a long view of the political history of smaller states carved out of big ones, examples being Jharkhand (Bihar), Chattisgarh (Madhya Pradesh) and Uttarakhand (Uttar Pradesh), two themes would become clear:

(i) National parties traditionally do much better in smaller states because the central leadership of the parties are not threatened enough by the rise of regional satraps to try and cut them to size.

(ii) Caste-based parties generally take a backseat. Essentially the dominant agricultural caste or caste(s) of the smaller state remain grateful to the national party or parties for having rescued them from the domination of the dominant agricultural castes of the state as a whole. (The case in point being Uttarakhand’s Pahadi Thakurs, who have supported the BJP and the Congress alternatively, while rejecting both the Samajwadi Party and the BSP. Even certain tribal communities of Jharkhand have now become the BJP’s core voters.)

The case of Chattisgarh in this regard is also interesting as well as instructive. The said region was a stronghold of the Congress party from the days of Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla (Vidya Charan Shukla’s father). However, since the long standing demand for statehood was met by the BJP, it has not lost a single election in the state. In this view of the matter, if the BJP wishes to consolidate its hold on vast swathes of the Hindi-speaking belt, trifurcation of Uttar Pradesh might be the way to go.