New Delhi: The dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh was a culmination of steady efforts by the party chief Akhilesh Yadav to expand the party’s catchment beyond Yadavs and Muslims and knit a broader coalition with Most Backward Castes and Dalits, the two communities that were earlier firmly aligned to the Bahujan Samaj Party.
The tactical shift in SP’s approach bore limited results in the 2022 assembly polls, but the increment in vote share wasn’t enough to offset BJP’s lead in a bipolar polity as the saffron party continued to mop up more than 40 percent in a bipolar polity.
When the SP tied up with the BSP for the 2019 LS polls, the party managed to win just 5 seats vis a vis Mayawati’s 10. The alliance did not work on the ground and BSP votes could not get transferred to SP candidates.
In the 2022 assembly polls, SP courted small caste-based parties that had a support base amongst non-dominant backward castes like Jats, Rajbhar, Kurmis, and Chouhan. The strategy worked in pockets in eastern UP but BJP managed to contain the damage to win a second consecutive term for Yogi Adityanath.
Change in approach
Both in 2019 and 2022, pre-poll allies quit the SP-led alliance in search of greener pastures. Akhilesh Yadav, thereafter, made a tactical shift in his approach by bringing on board battle-hardened leaders from the BSP who were seeking to anchor around alternative political formations in the face of general drift in the BSP.
SP targeted leaders from most backward classes like Kurmis, the boatmen, or the Nishads, and traditional horticulturists like Maurya/Shakya/Saini/Koeris/ Kushwaha/Rajbhar. He also tried to wean away a section of Dalits, especially the Pasis.
In 2022, Ambedkar Nagar district in central UP became the laboratory for this new social engineering where SP fielded BSP turncoats to register a victory in all 5 assembly segments.
Consolidating Muslims
On the day Nitish Kumar quit the INDIA alliance to join NDA just ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Akhilesh Yadav made a unilateral announcement offering 13 out of 80 seats to the Congress.
Negotiations continued for a while and the Congress settled for 17 seats. This helped SP consolidate Muslim votes despite BSP deciding to go solo.
Ticket distribution
The selection of candidates played a key role in SP’s victory in just concluded elections. The party tried to shed the Muslim-Yadav tag by giving tickets to only 4 Muslim candidates and 5 Yadavs.
The space thus created was used to accommodate leaders from MBC and the Pasi community- especially those who had crossed over from the BSP.
In two general seats, Akhilesh fielded SC candidates including Ayodhya where its candidate defeated BJP’s Lallu Singh by over 50 thousand votes.
The party’s final tally shows almost half of the winning candidates have been associated with the BSP in the past as SP registered its best-ever performance in the Lok Sabha elections both in terms of seats and vote share.
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