Losing in its own bastion in the bypolls has shaken Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh which was expecting to make big in the coming general elections of 2024. The results have shown the erosion of SP’s main vote bank, the Yadav and Muslims in the state. Besides the partial revival of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) too is an alarming bell for the SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav.
Above all the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) is happy to make a dent in the strong Yadav-dominated Azamgarh and a Muslim majority parliament seat of Rampur. Till now, the BJP had won Azamgarh only once while twice in Rampur since independence. The victory of BJP’s Dinesh Lal Yadav alias Nirahua in Azamgarh is a clear indication that the saffron party has made a dent in the Yadav vote bank of SP. With 26 per cent Yadav and 22 per cent Muslim votes, Azamgarh has always been a happy hunting ground for SP. Besides in Rampur where the Muslim and non-Muslim voters are 50:50, SP always had a better chance and barring the 1998 and 2014 parliament elections, BJP had never won. The situation this time was tougher with neither Congress nor the BSP had fielded its candidate in Rampur. The victory of the BJP in Rampur has shown that it has managed to get a certain portion of minority votes.
According to senior SP leaders, the poll debacle was mainly due to the state-sponsored atrocities on voters who belonged to ant BJP camp. SP leader Azam Khan soon after the results blamed that voters were not allowed to cast their votes in minority-dominated areas. In Azamgarh, the SP leaders blamed it on the BSP candidate and said that minority votes were divided.
However, according to political analysts, the reason behind the poor performance of SP was the indifference of minority votes which unlike the recently assembly elections, did not vote en mass for Akhilesh Yadav. The silence of the SP Chief on the recent atrocities on Muslims also annoyed the community and the same was the case with Yadav.
What is more disturbing for SP Chief is the emergence of BSP in these bypolls. The BSP had only contested the Azamgarh seat and got more than 2.70 lakh votes here, which is barely a few thousand less than the SP candidate. Unlike previous assembly polls, the BSP candidate managed to get a large chunk of Muslim votes also thus ensuring the defeat of the SP candidate. If the trend continues in the 2024 parliament elections, SP would be in rough weather.
