Uttar Pradesh – or ‘UP’ for short – went to the polls every five years, in what was always the world’s largest local election. Home to some 220 million people, the state stretched from the borders of New Delhi in the west to the holy capital of Varanasi nearly 800 kilometres to the east, lying at the centre of what was sometimes referred to as the ‘cow belt’.1 Criss-crossed by the sacred Ganges and dotted with innumerable spiritual sites, this was India’s heartland; a region that acted as the bosom of its identity both as an independent nation and under the British and Mughal empires
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