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After by-election battle, SP-RLD, BJP to be tested in Uttar Pradesh civic polls
The opposition SP-RLD alliance, relying on Jat-Yadav-Muslim support, is set to contest the Uttar Pradesh civic polls together
All eyes are on the urban local body polls after the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal (SP-RLD) alliance snatched the Khatauli assembly seat in Muzaffarnagar from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) while retaining the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat and the BJP marked its win in Muslim majority Rampur Sadar assembly seat in the December 5 bypolls.
The opposition SP-RLD alliance, relying on Jat-Yadav-Muslim support, is set to contest the Uttar Pradesh civic polls together.
The RLD has even set up a committee to work out the finer points of arrangements with its senior partner to firm up the other backward classes (OBC)-Muslim mix even as the BJP readies for another round of ‘pasmanda (backward)’ Muslim outreach.
Since June, the BJP has won three seats with a sizeable Muslim presence — Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha (June bypolls) and Rampur assembly, earlier this month.
There would be the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Congress, too, along with several other regional parties from many parts of the country, testing themselves in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the 2024 LS polls, but political experts admit that the focus in the civic polls would continue to be on the opposition alliance and the BJP.
Adding to the political spice is the fact that the main opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) is a united family front now. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s uncle Shivpal has merged his political party with the SP.
“Yes, we would now contest all polls jointly, starting with civic elections and subsequently the 2024 Lok Sabha polls too,” Shivpal said. In 2017, when the SP-RLD had contested the civic polls, Shivpal had begun drifting apart.
Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, this family unity, along with the alliance, would be tested in the civic polls, politicians and political experts said. “The impact of ‘ghar wapsi aur gathbandhan (return to family and alliance)’ would be tested in the civic polls. In Khatauli, the alliance win was a surprise but too much should not be read into the victory,” said a U.P. BJP functionary.
This BJP functionary said that the party’s state chief Bhupendra Chaudhary, a Jat leader who himself hails from the region, has started fixing reasons for the BJP’s embarrassing loss in the west Uttar Pradesh seat. The alliance has posed a problem for the BJP in the west Uttar Pradesh region.
“The Khatauli loss shows that the alliance’s Jat-Yadav (OBC)-Muslim mix that has been a cause of problem for the BJP since 2022 assembly polls, nine months back remains a cause for concern. So, as the alliance remains firm, the BJP top leadership surely would like to even things out in the urban local body polls by its aggressive wooing Muslims to neutralise the alliance’s advantage in these polls, the last test of the urban electorate ahead of the 2024 LS polls,” said Irshad Ilmi, a political expert.
In the 2022 U.P. polls, the alliance had won four of the six assembly seats in Muzaffarnagar, the epicentre of farmers’ agitation against the three now-repealed farm laws. The alliance had made inroads, RLD winning three of these four seats in Meerut, two of the three seats won by alliance in Shamli, one seat in Baghpat, one seat in Muzaffarnagar and lost a close contest in Bijnor. Despite a BJP sweep elsewhere, RLD-SP alliance humbled top BJP ministers and lawmakers in west U.P, including Suresh Rana, the then sugarcane minister in Thana Bhawan, lawmaker Umesh Malik in Budhana, Sangeet Som in Sardhana and Ramvir Upadhyaya in Sadabad (Hathras).
“We would have won more seats had we got certain other things right as well. There were assembly seats in Aligarh, Mathura and in many other parts of west UP where we could have won,” said a RLD leader, citing poor selection of candidates among the reasons.
“This time, however, we hope to get it right and hopefully, in the civic polls, one would get to see the difference,” this leader said.
To counter the alliance, part of the BJP game plan is to aggressively woo Muslims by citing examples of results in Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha bypolls in June and more recently, their win in Rampur (Sadar), a Muslim-majority seat from where the BJP had never won since 1952, when the first poll after independence was held there.
