Samajwadi Party’s own house in order, time for bigger battle - 2019 elections

Decimated by a BJP onslaught, the Samajwadi Party under Akhilesh Yadav’s leadership is rewriting the rules — an unlikely alliance with the BSP was the first step.

Just a few months ago, the Samajwadi Party (SP) appeared to have been consigned to history; thrashed by a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and then again in the 2017 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. And a feud in the SP’s first family was only making things worse for the party that once played kingmaker at the Centre.

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and other senior leaders address a press conference after the by-election results, at the party headquarters in Lucknow on Wednesday.(PTI File Photo)

But politics is all about perception and the SP’s recent electoral successes may have broken the shackles on the party and given it the platform to launch a fightback against the dominant BJP in the general elections next year.

Much of this hope stems from an unlikely alliance between the SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Mayawati, a tie-up which led to the SP’s spectacular victory in the recent Lok Sabha bypoll in Gorakhpur, the once invincible fortress of chief minister Yogi Adityanath. “We have shown the shape of things to come,” SP president Akhilesh Yadav said after the victory. “I am ready to make sacrifices...I will be big-hearted when the time comes.”

In the political context, UP is India’s bellwether state with 80 Lok Sabha seats, the highest among all states.

The country’s most populous state is also the personal electoral battleground for Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as Congress president Rahul Gandhi and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

And it is widely acknowledged that the party which wins the most number of seats in UP holds the key to forming the government at the Centre.

For the record, the BJP had won 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and 312 assembly seats out of 403 in 2017.

In contrast, the SP’s numbers fell to 5 from 23 in the Lok Sabha and to 43 from 224 in the assembly.

It had never been so bad for the party formed by Mulayam Singh Yadav, a wrestler-turned-politician and father of Akhilesh, in 1992. It won 16 seats in its very first Lok Sabha polls in 1996 and continued to get better (see chart).

Until a series of events threw Akhilesh’s house into total disarray.

Just before the assembly polls, Akhilesh was engaged in a bitter power struggle with his uncle Shivpal Yadav. Mulayam sided with Shivpal, turning it into a three-front war between father, son and uncle.

The successive electoral debacles were also telling on the party with four members of the legislative council – the upper house of the bicameral legislature – and four members of his erstwhile cabinet switched to the BJP.

Then, in the presidential elections in July last year, Shivpal and some of his camp members, apparently on the instructions of Mulayam, voted for the National Democratic Alliance candidate Ram Nath Kovind, defying Akhilesh’s whip to vote for United Progressive Alliance (UPA) candidate Meira Kumar.

The turnaround began when Akhilesh was re-elected the SP’s national president in October last year with the backing of Mulayam. Shivpal had no option but to grudgingly fall in line.

Akhilesh also held a series of talks with Mulayam which, party insiders say, were aimed at convincing the elder Yadav about the need for unity to take on the BJP.

Then came Akhilesh’s tactical move of joining hands with Mayawati, the worst sufferer of the BJP’s onslaught. She did not win a single LS seat in 2014 and managed only 19 assembly seats in 2017.

Mulayam was quick to support Akhilesh on the deal with Mayawati; it was, after all, replicating what Mulayam himself had done in 1993 with Mayawati’s mentor Kanshi Ram.

The 1993 polls were fought in the backdrop of the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992 and the BJP was riding a wave in its favour in a communally-polarised state.

At that time, UP had 425 seats in the assembly’s lower house as Uttarakhand was yet to be formed.

Mulayam’s SP contested in 267 seats and BSP 156 under the pact. The SP won 109 and BSP 67. The BJP was halted at 177. Despite the BJP emerging as the single largest party, SP-BSP, along with 27 MLAs from Janata Dal (JD), formed the government and Mulayam became the chief minister.

Though the government did not last long, the experiment was proof that such a political alignment was possible.

Political experts say that Akhilesh is trying the same strategy for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In 1993, the BJP had blurred the caste lines; Akhilesh and Mayawati are magnifying them again.

“The formula is simple: Muslims+Dalits+Yadav+OBCs (non-Yadav other backward classes). The combination is formidable,” said SK Dwivedi, a political analyst who is the former head of the department of political science in Lucknow University.

“Muslims form 19% of UP’s population, Dalits 21%, Yadavs 7%, and non-Yadav OBCs 32%. So, SP on its own is not a challenger to BJP, but with BSP, it is powerful. Both the parties have their strong individual base,” he added.

That Akhilesh is open to alliances was evident in 2017, when he tied up with the Congress but the move was a spectacular failure.

For the recent Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls, Akhilesh began with the small parties: Peace Party and Nishad Party, players with pockets of influence. With Mayawati’s backing, the SP pulled off upset victories in the seats once held by Yogi Adityanath and the deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya.

SP leaders say that Akhilesh is keen on having an alliance of all like-minded parties for 2019, though neither he nor Mayawati has given any hints if they would like to have the Congress on board.

“...If the two parties (SP and BSP) and like-minded parties, including the Congress, come together, then it is certain that they will be able to wipe out the BJP in UP (in 2019),” said Zishan Haider, spokesperson of the UP Congress.

Akhilesh is also in touch with the leaders outside UP, including West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee and Bihar’s Lalu Prasad Yadav besides former prime minister HD Deve Gowda.

MP Ahirwar, a Dalit thinker and a professor at Banaras Hindu University, described the SP-BSP alliance as a “mature decision” and added it was “inherently capable and has the potential to defeat BJP in UP in 2019”.

To be sure, the alliance faces potential pitfalls.

The battered SP may have emerged as a challenger, but the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Adityanath is not the BJP of 1993 when Mulayam managed to checkmate it.

And alliances have never been long-lasting in UP, often falling under the weight of their own contradictions; from a clash of personal egos to distribution of seats, anything could be a flashpoint.

Since the first tie-up in 1993, the SP and BSP have been bitter rivals. Leaders of both parties agree that seat-sharing could be a tricky issue.

The BJP tried to brush aside any threat from the alliance.

Vijay Bahadur Pathak, the general secretary of the state BJP, said the party is working on a strategy to ensure 50% of the votes.

“So it hardly matters if SP and BSP come together or all the other parties come together. If we have 50% vote share, then we are the winners,” he added.

An alliance may well be the last weapon left for the opposition parties in the face of a political juggernaut that has perfected the art of winning elections.

“If these parties wish to end the dominance of one party, then they must unite in an organised manner with a common minimum programme in place in advance. The BJP too doesn’t have its 2014 popularity any longer,” political analyst Dwivedi said.