As Mayawati Decides To Contest Alone, Prospects Of INDIA Look Bleak In Uttar Pradesh For Lok Sabha Elections 2024

In a recent statement, Mayawati announced that the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) will be contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and assembly polls in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana on its own, without forming an alliance with any other party.

This is a big jolt to the opposition alliance of 26 parties, which goes by the name INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) because BSP has a considerable voter base in Uttar Pradesh.

UP is electorally the most important state of the country as it sends the highest (80) number of Members of Parliament to the Lok Sabha.

One can argue that INDIA has the support of the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) which is currently the largest opposition party in the state with 108 of the 403 assembly seats.

However, Yadav doesn't seem to be getting the attention in INDIA that would be expected for an opposition leader of Uttar Pradesh.

He was not given much exposure in the Bengaluru meeting as compared to Mamata Banerjee or Arvind Kejriwal or Congress leaders.

Another issue with the position of INDIA in UP is that all is not well within the SP-RLD alliance. The buzz was loud until last week about the possibility of Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) breaking away.

The SP-RLD alliance has been experiencing strain since disagreements over the urban local body polls.

Last week, RLD announced its plan to contest 12 Lok Sabha seats in western Uttar Pradesh for the 2024 elections which might be troubling for the SP.

In the opposition meeting held on 23 June in Patna, Jayant Choudhary was absent and Yadav was the lone leader from UP there which further fueled the speculations.

However, those rumours have cooled down for now as RLD chief Jayant Choudhary was seen sitting next to Yadav in the opposition meeting held in Bengaluru.

But INDIA is yet to decide a seat-sharing arrangement and the RLD has shown its unwillingness to sacrifice seats for the sake of its alliance with the SP which can strain ties in future.

Akhilesh Yadav's other ally, Om Prakash Rajbhar-led Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), which contested the 2022 UP elections in alliance with the SP, has already joined the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Rajbhar's son and SBSP's general secretary Dr Arvind Rajbhar in a recent TV interview revealed that Akhilesh Yadav had said that he contested the 2022 elections to lose and Modi is set to return to power in 2024.

"We will prepare for the 2027 elections," Arvind said quoting Yadav. If this is true, it reflects that Yadav knows his position and will half-heartedly contest the Lok Sabha elections.

One of the reasons for this is that the SP and Congress, both share a common vote bank of the minority community. Yadav might be wanting to avoid closeness with the Congress, so that his MY (Muslim-Yadav) equation remains intact.

Meanwhile, the NDA seems to be strengthening itself in Uttar Pradesh with SBSP as its new alliance partner. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is already in alliance with Sanjay Nishad-led NISHAD party and Anupriya Patel-led Apna Dal (Soneylal).

Electoral background

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP was in alliance with Apna Dal (Soneylal) with the former winning 62 seats and the latter two seats.

BJP's other two current allies, the NISHAD party and SBSP don't hold any parliamentary seat.

Whereas the SP and BSP were in the alliance. BSP witnessed a jump from zero in 2014 to 10 in 2019 seats as it benefitted from the alliance, while the SP remained constant at five seats. Soon the alliance was called off.

SP's other ally RLD drew a blank in the last two parliamentary elections. Congress won two seats in 2014 and one in 2019.

In the 2022 assembly elections, BSP could win just one seat and Congress two seats while contesting alone. However, BSP's vote share was 12.88 per cent, while Congress' just 2.33 per cent where most of its candidates lost the deposit.

This means BSP still has a substantial support base and while contesting alone it is likely to cut votes of other parties. Whom it will harm more, INDIA or NDA remains to be seen.

RLD and SBSP won eight and six seats respectively in alliance with the SP. The SP itself won 111 seats.

While the BJP won 255 seats, its ally Apna Dal won 12 seats and NISHAD part six seats. It is now expected that BJP will accommodate SBSP at the same level as NISHAD party.

It might offer a Lok Sabha ticket from Ghazipur to Rajbhar's son Arvind and make Om Prakash a cabinet minister in Yogi 2.0.

Some suggest that the BJP is only willing to give one seat to the SBSP, while the SBSP is pushing for three to four Lok Sabha seats. They argue that the SBSP has the ability to win these seats in association with the BJP.