The results of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls gave a jolt to the Samajwadi Party (SP) as three sitting MPs of the Yadav family lost their seats.
Although the party won five seats this time as it did in 2014 but with a difference.
In the last polls, the party had lost all the seats it contested except the five that the Yadav family members contested.
In 2014, Mulayam Singh Yadav was the national president of the party and Akhilesh Yadav was the state president of the party and the UP chief minister.
Back then, Mulayam Singh Yadav had won two seats namely Mainpuri and Azamgarh, Dimple Yadav had won Kannauj, Akhilesh’s nephews Dharmendra Yadav, Akshaya Yadav had won Badaun and Firozabad seats. When Mulayam vacated Mainpuri, his grandnephew Tej Pratap Singh Yadav won it. However in the 2009 general election, the party had won 23 seats.
This time around, SP president Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav lost by over 12,000 votes in Kannauj, Akhilesh’s nephews Dharmendra and Akshaya Yadav lost Badaun and Firozabad seats by a margin of over 18,000 and 28,000 votes respectively.
While, Akshaya’s victory was doubtful since his uncle Shivpal Yadav (who split from the SP after the family feud) floated the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) and announced contesting the Firozabad seat against Akshaya, the defeat of Dharmendra Yadav and Dimple Yadav came as a surprise.
{{/usCountry}}While, Akshaya’s victory was doubtful since his uncle Shivpal Yadav (who split from the SP after the family feud) floated the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) and announced contesting the Firozabad seat against Akshaya, the defeat of Dharmendra Yadav and Dimple Yadav came as a surprise.
{{/usCountry}}Dharmendra Yadav had won the Budaun seat in the 2009 and 2014 general elections. Dimple Yadav too had won the Kannauj seat in 2012 bypolls and in 2014 parliamentary election.
However, the three Yadav loses were compensated for by the victory of the party’s three Muslim candidates in Rampur, Sambhal, Moradabad.
All three candidates Azam Khan, Shafiq-ur-Rehman Barq, and ST Hasan won their seats by a convincing margin. Even party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had requested the voters to make him win with the highest margin in the country since it was his last election, won the Mainpuri seat by a drastically shrunken margin of 94,000 votes.
Akhilesh turned out to be the only Yadav who won by a convincing margin of 2.5 lakh votes.
The party’s poll percentage too fell in comparison to its 2009 and 2014 performance. In 2009, the SP’s vote share was 23.26% and in 2014 it came down to 22.35%. This time around, the party’s vote share dipped to 17.96%.
In the just concluded LS polls, the SP had contested 37 seats under its seat sharing arrangement with alliance partners Bahujan Samaj Party (38) and Rashtriya Lok Dal (3). The only gainer in the alliance turned out to be Mayawati whose party won 10 seats.
The party had failed to open its account in the 2014 polls. The Rashtriya Lok Dal could not win any seats in 2014 and same was the case this time too.