E-Paper
Stakes high for Samajwadi Party in Mulayam’s Mainpuri
The Samajwadi Party’s hold is being put to test less than a year after Akhilesh Yadav won the Karhal assembly seat in Mainpuri district in March
Much has changed since 2019 when Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav won the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat in the last election of his life. Back then, leaving bitter hostilities behind, Mulayam had shared the stage with Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati for the first time in nearly 25 years. The venue was the Christian College ground in Mainpuri and the date April 19, 2019.
The two leaders, accompanied by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, sat side by side even as the crowd cheered the alliance.
“Jiska jalwa kayam hai….uska naam Mulayam hai” was the most commonly raised slogan in the constituency then.
Mulayam introduced Mayawati to Samajwadi Party workers and asked them to touch her feet to show their respect.
Mainpuri faces a bypoll now due to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s death on October 10. Besides, the SP’s alliance with the BSP ended soon after the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
The SP has now fielded Dimple Yadav, the ‘bahu’ (daughter-in-law) of Mulyam Singh Yadav and wife of Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav.
The December 5 by-election is a prestige battle for the Samajwadi Party in this key constituency of the Yadav heartland.
The SP’s hold is being put to test less than a year after Akhilesh Yadav won the Karhal assembly seat in Mainpuri district in March.
“The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) stands a chance this time in the by-election. Its victory will pave a clear road for the party in the 2024 parliamentary election,” Union minister of state for law and justice SP Singh Baghel, the BJP’s Agra MP, said.
He had unsuccessfully contested the Karhal assembly seat against Akhilesh in early 2022.
“There is no Mulayam Singh Yadav contesting this time. Even in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the victory margin was 94,000 despite the SP and the BSP being in alliance,” said Baghel who had contested against SP candidate Dimple Yadav in in the 2009 Firozabad Lok Sabha by-election. Congress’s Raj Babbar had gone on to win the Firozabad seat.
“The Samajwadi Party is nervous and is making last-minute changes in the district level organisation. This is unusual when the SP claims Mainpuri is its stronghold. Alok Shakya was named the new district president for Mainpuri ahead of the bypoll. The BJP had won two out of four assembly seats in Mainpuri in 2022. The SP’s hold is decreasing. The BJP has MLAs from Bhongaon and Mainpuri Sadar now,” the minister added.
“We have recently seen how Samajwadi Party lost by-elections in its stronghold Rampur and Azamgarh and the BJP will repeat the success in Mainpuri this time,” he said.
The Samajwadi Party’s newly appointed district president Alok Shakya asserted that Mainpuri continues to be an SP stronghold from where netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) and his family members won with margin of lakhs of votes in past.
“The margin of victory in 2019 for netaji was less than was what we expected but there might have been some shortcomings on our part which will be addressed this time. Our leader Dimple Yadav will win by lakhs of votes,” said Alok Shakya.
He said the loss of two seats in Mainpuri district to the BJP in this year’s assembly elections was because of “misuse of government machinery.”
The Mainpuri parliamentary seat is part of Agra division. It has 17 lakh voters, including 4.30 lakh Yadavs, 2.90 lakh Shakyas, 2 lakh Thakurs, 1.50 lakh Scheduled Castes , 1.10 lakh Brahmins, 1 lakh Lodhis, 70,000 Vaishyas and 60,000 Muslims.
