Unlike the Bahujan Samaj Party-Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance of 2019 in Uttar Pradesh there is little scope for trust deficit in Congress-SP tie up this time.
This factor may prove crucial in the coming Lok Sabha poll in the state.
Though the BSP-SP-RLD combine got 38.65% of votes it could win only 15 seats because the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance walked away with 64 seats as it received 49.6% of votes. The Congress got only 6.3% votes and won only one seat, that was Rae Bareli by Sonia Gandhi.
On paper, the BSP-SP-RLD alliance appeared very formidable. The tussle would have been equally poised with the NDA had there been more trust between the workers of Mayawati’s and Akhilesh Yadav’s parties. While BSP won 10 seats SP got only five. This was simply because while the Samajwadi Party’s voters threw their lot behind the BSP’s candidates the supporters of Behanji did not reciprocate in the same manner. Many of them shifted their loyalty towards the saffron party.
Uneasiness at the grassroots level
Historical, sociological, and political reasons were responsible for this mistrust. Though Mayawati and Akhilesh agreed to bury the 1995 Lucknow Guest House assault on former SP workers after Behanji decided to withdraw support to Mulayam Singh Yadav government and later formed her government with the help of Bharatiya Janata Party, the BSP rank and file had not fully forgotten this incident. This was the outcome after Akhilesh showed enough generosity and left 38 seats for BSP against 37 for his party. Three others were left for Rashtriya Lok Dal (then led by now late Ajit Singh) and no candidates were put up in Amethi and Rae Bareli from where Rahul and Sonia Gandhi were contesting.
At the same time at the grassroots level there always exists uneasiness in the relationship between Yadavs and Dalits in east and central Uttar Pradesh and Dalits and Jats in the western part of the state. Needless to say, SP is dominated and led by Yadavs, while BSP and RLD by Dalits and Jats respectively. The BJP fully exploited these contradictions.
The BSP was also mired by the internal feud as non-Jatav Dalits resented the control of this social group over the party. Jatavs are estimated to form more than 60 % of the Dalit vote bank which is 21.3% of the state population. The saffron party wooed the non-Jatav vote bank of the BSP in 2019.
True, Muslims, who form 19.3% of UP population, sided with the BSP-SP-RLD alliance yet there was lack of enthusiasm towards this combination in many seats. SP was yet to fully come out of the family dispute between Akhilesh on one side and father and uncle Mulayam and Shivpal Yadav on the other. Among other things, this was an important factor behind the voting out of power of the Akhilesh Singh Yadav government in 2017. Now the SP has finally overcome this crisis and has won 110-odd seats in the 2022 Assembly election against 47 in 2017.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha poll Muslims were still wary of the flip-flop of Mayawati towards the BJP and the Muzaffarnagar riots of September 2013 had still been fresh in the mind of the community. Therefore, a sizeable number of them threw their lot behind the Congress instead of BSP and RLD candidates. This caused division of votes which ultimately favoured the BJP.
Likely scenario in 2024
Contrary to this the Congress-SP tie-up does not face such hurdles. The parting away of Jat-dominated RLD has come as a sort of blessing in disguise. Anyway, 91% of Jats of this region had in 2019 voted for the BJP and not for RLD which was on the BSP-SP side. As West UP has less Yadav and a sizeable Dalit and Muslim population there is more likelihood of an alliance between these two social groups. Congress is fielding its candidates in many of these constituencies of the region. It would be too much to expect from the Dalit card of its president Mallikarjun Kharge, yet it is also a fact that BSP is facing
desertion and is in a dormant state. If SP-Congress succeeds in alluring Chandrashekar Azad’s Azad Samaj Party in West UP it may come as a shot in the arm as he is an upcoming Dalit face in Western UP.
The crossing over of RLD to the BJP camp is not going to benefit the BJP much. It may just check the desertion of Jats from the saffron camp following the farmers’ agitation and protest by women wrestlers. Jats of neighbouring Haryana and Rajasthan are leaving the saffron camp in large numbers.
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