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Decoding U.P. bypolls: SP unity, alliance emerge as areas of concern for BJP
With the BSP and the Congress staying away, the by-polls in Mainpuri Lok Sabha and the Rampur and Khatauli assembly seats were a direct contest between the ruling BJP and the SP.
After the bypoll results on Thursday, a BJP leader flagged “ghar wapsi aur gathbandhan (uncle’s homecoming and alliance) as areas of concern for his party for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The ghar wapsi comment referred to Shivpal Yadav’s patch-up with his nephew, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. After the bypoll results, the duo announced the formal merger of Shivpal’s Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia with the SP.
With the BSP and the Congress staying away, the by-polls in Mainpuri Lok Sabha and the Rampur and Khatauli assembly seats were a direct contest between the ruling BJP and the SP.
The SP retained Mainpuri Lok Sabha, the epicentre of Yadav land. The BJP’s convincing defeat in Khatauli assembly seat in Muzaffarnagar, a crucial constituency of the Jat belt, indicated the continuing concern the SP-RLD alliance posed for the ruling party in west UP.
“Don’t forget Rampur, though,” this BJP leader said.
His comment was a reference to the BJP’s first win in Muslim majority Rampur assembly seat where SP veteran Azam Khan had backed his loyalist Asim Raza against the ruling party’s Akash Saxena.
Azam Khan had been winning this seat since 1980, a stray loss in 1996, notwithstanding.
In June , the BJP had won the Rampur Lok Sabha seat in a bypoll during which Azam had again backed Raza against his one-time loyalist turned BJP candidate Ghanshyam Lodhi.
“Even when we were trailing initially, I had said votes counted by then were from Rampur city, dominated by Muslims while Hindus dominate rural Rampur,” Lodhi said as the SP alleged misuse of government machinery to influence results.
While the loss of Rampur is being interpreted more as a dent to Azam’s personal political dominance in the region, Mainpuri and Khatauli results now pose a concern for the BJP, party leaders and political experts admit.
Soon after landslide win of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav and the fact that she got massive lead from Jaswantnagar, Shivpal’s assembly segment, SP chief tweeted “Shivpal Yadav zindabad (hail Shivpal).”
“Ek hokey ab chunaav ladenge (now, we will contest polls as one),” said Shivpal. BJP leaders privately admitted that the family unity meant BJP would have to work harder to make a dent in SP bastions in 2024 Lok Sabha elections in UP. Officially, BJP said the win was more due to sympathy factor for SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav whose demise had caused the bypoll.
“I think the SP benefitted more due to sympathy factor for Mulayam Singh Yadav ji than anything else,” said U.P. minister Dinesh Pratap Singh.
In Khatauli, the win of RLD-SP nominee Madan Bhaiya against Rajkumari Saini, wife of Vikram Saini, the disqualified BJP lawmaker whose conviction in 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots case set up the by-poll, was worrying for the BJP.
The BJP had lost 16 seats in U.P. in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Seven of these seats were from the west U.P. belt, including all six seats in Moradabad division and nine of the 16 seats in Saharanpur region.
In 2022 U.P. assembly polls, despite the BJP’s overall impressive win, the SP-RLD alliance made a big impression in the Jat belt, bagging 17 of the 27 seats in the Moradabad division against the BJP’s 10 and 9 out of 16 seats in the Saharanpur region. The alliance candidates had also done well in in Shamli and Muzaffarnagar districts where Muslim-Jat combination worked in its favour, resulting in win of its candidates in all three seats in Shamli district (Kairana, Shamli and Thana Bhawan) in 2022 assembly polls. Back then BJP had won Muzaffarnagar city and Khatauli, the latter has now been reclaimed by RLD-SP.
In 2017 election, the BJP had won six (of total 7) seats in Meerut district but in 2022 it could win only three.
“Back in August, BJP had named its first Jat chief in UP, Bhupendra Chaudhary after having named its general secretary (organisation) Dharampal Singh, also from west UP, with an eye on countering the SP-RLD alliance. But, as by-poll results, show the alliance is standing firm and this is a problem area that BJP think tank perhaps would have started work on. And yes, the Rampur win is significant too,” said Athar Hussain of the Centre for Objective Research and Development.
