UP: Will Akhilesh Yadav's Call for Electoral Alliances Benefit SP, pin Down BJP?

Lucknow: Learning from its losses, the Samajwadi Party (SP) is making efforts to build a united Opposition front to pin down the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and reclaim the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 general elections.

Announcing the 'PDA', which he defined as a “Pichde (backward classes), dalit and Alpasankhyak (minorities)”, Yadav has embarked on the road to bringing together various faces representing these three sections in a bid to grab power.

While Yadav ruled out any kind of alliance with Congress in Uttar Pradesh in the next Lok Sabha polls scheduled to be held in May 2024, this move by SP signals desperation on the part of the party to re-establish lost ground in India's most electorally significant state. Reportedly, SP is also under pressure, internally and externally, to ‘patch up’ with Congress.

At a recent rally, Yadav attacked the ruling BJP government in the state, saying that Uttar Pradesh was suffering in several aspects and had been brought to a halt because of the BJP's “style of functioning” and that there was widespread dissatisfaction among the people at large.

The SP leader also mentioned the incident where a BJP MP had allegedly assaulted police personnel, and said that the police were being assaulted by the saffron party leaders across the state. The state had also seen the maximum number of custodial deaths ever since the BJP came to power in the state in 2017, he said.

Read Also: UP: Family Protests as Dalit Man Dies of Alleged ‘Torture’ in Police Custody in Mainpuri

 Yadav, however, admitted that the Opposition needed to start preparing if it wanted to defeat the BJP in 2024. He said he had embarked on a strategy to assess and evaluate every parliamentary seat, for which he was meeting leaders and workers at both the national and local levels.

“Only a few months left to go for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and preparations must be done on war-footing on the ground if we have to defeat BJP, as BJP contests elections very aggressively. They hire big companies to destroy the image of Opposition leaders and spend huge amounts of money on it. The party is so powerful that it opens up thousands of crores of its budget for ads in newspapers and TV channels. We have limited resources, as our members and leaders on the ground are working on the ground round the clock in the scorching heat," the SP leader told reporters.

Led by Yadav, SP, the principal Opposition party in UP, recently launched the 'Lok Jagaran Yatra' from Lakhimpur Kheri to raise the issues of caste census and social justice. The yatra is supposed to cover all 80 Lok Sabha seats.

Read Also: UP: Akhilesh Yadav Launches 'Lok Janjagran Yatra' to Focus on Social Justice, Caste Census

Describing the caste census as one of the biggest issues in the country, the former UP Chief Minister said several countries had made provisions to empower the weaker sections. “They have formulated and implemented rules accordingly, but in our country, people are being misguided by false slogans of the BJP”, he alleged.

Recently, Om Prakash Rajbhar, president of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), commenting on the idea of a united alliance against BJP, told the media that if such an alliance was to be formed, Mayawati (Bahujan Samaj Party supremo) should be announced as the potential Prime Minister. Rajbhar also said that post-Independence, the OBC (Other Backward Class) community has not been given the benefits it was looking for, despite supporting several parties like Congress, Janata Dal (United), BJP, etc.

"Akhilesh only talks about social justice and caste census when his party is not in power and when he is in power, he forgets about social empowerment of OBCs. The SP is desperate to come to power and is doing this melodrama," Rajbhar told NewsClick.

However, when asked about the share and representation BJP had given to his party (earlier it was an ally of BJP), Rajbhar said, "There are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests, in politics. We will decide the future course of action soon."

In the 2022 Assembly elections, Rajbhar's SBSP had contested as an ally of the SP. It won six seats but the alliance fell apart a few months after the results were announced. In the recent past, Rajbhar has been once again showing his inclination to lean toward BJP.

SBSP was a BJP ally in the 2017 elections and had won four of the eight seats it had contested. Rajbhar was made a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government but resigned in May 2019.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the SP formed an alliance with the BSP and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), collectively known as the ‘Mahagathbandhan,’ or ‘grand alliance’. However, this coalition proved more beneficial to BSP, which secured 10 seats, while SP won just five seats.

While SP contested on 37 seats, BSP and RLD fought on 38 and three seats, respectively, leaving two seats for the Congress.

Out of the 37 seats contested by SP, it managed to win only five, but secured the second position on 31 seats. Although Akhilesh Yadav himself won the Azamgarh seat in the 2019 general election, he subsequently vacated it after securing victory in the 2022 Assembly polls. The SP faced defeat in the Azamgarh bye-election.

The Kannauj seat was later contested by Yadav’s wife, Dimple Yadav, who faced defeat. Following the demise of SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav in 2022, Dimple Yadav won the bye-election for the Mainpuri seat.

In the 2019 elections, the Samajwadi Party emerged victorious in the following seats: Azamgarh, Moradabad, Rampur, Sambhal, and Mainpuri.

The Apna Dal (Sonelal), led by Union minister Anupriya Patel, and Nishad Party led by state Minister Sanjay Nishad, are partners of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), while the Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) is an SP ally.

The Nishad Party contested the 2022 Assembly elections in alliance with BJP. It had fielded 16 candidates, of which 10 were fielded on their party symbol "boat" while on six seats, the candidates were fielded on BJP's symbol. The party won a total of 11 seats, six seats on its symbol and five on BJP's symbol.

 Meanwhile, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which has been in alliance with SP, is going on widening the alliance to include Congress – something SP is averse to.

RLD president Jayant Chaudhary has made it clear that he has no intentions of joining the BJP-led NDA but, in politics, anything is possible.

Similarly, AIMIM ( All-India Majlis-e-Itihadul Muslimeen) leader Shaukat Ali told Newslclick that secular parties considered Muslim and dalit leaders untouchable. He said his party will ally with a party that gives preference to Muslim-dalit leadership.