The Samajwadi Party is contesting the Lok Sabha elections this time with a new partner – Congress. The SP had contested the 2017 UP assembly elections in alliance with the Congress but it ended in a disaster. This time the SP is confident that the Lok Sabha elections will throw up some surprising results.
The SP had contested to 2019 Lok Sabha polls in alliance with Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal, and had given the Bharatiya Janata Party a good fight in a handful of constituencies in western and eastern parts of UP, but had failed to dent the overwhelming presence of the saffron party in the state.
With BSP chief Mayawati deciding to go it alone this time, it will be up to the SP and the Congress to prevent the division of anti-BJP votes and check the onward march of the ruling party in UP.
As compared to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP is much better placed this time as it has stitched alliance with four caste based small political parties –Apna Dal (Sonelal), Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party, NISHAD Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP and allies had won 73 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
The party ceded some ground in the 2019 general elections, when the opposition parties scraped their combined tally to 16. Even with anti-incumbency apprehensions at work, the saffron party had won 62 seats, bolstered further by two more seats won by its ally Apna Dal (Sonelal).
In 2019, the maximum seats – 23 – for the BJP came from the state’s western part, where the SP-BSP alliance could manage to win only four seats each.
The BSP won Saharanpur, Bijnor, Amroha and Nagina (SC) Lok Sabha seats in the western UP, while the SP emerged victorious in Sambhal, Moradabad, Mainpuri (first held by Mulayam Singh Yadav then by Dimple Yadav in a bypoll) and Rampur seats that year.
The central region of the state has prominent Lok Sabha constituencies of Amethi and Rae Bareli –both considered bastions of the Congress.
In 2019, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi retained her Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat while her son, Rahul Gandhi, lost the long-held Amethi seat to Union minister Smriti Irani.
The BSP won only one seat from this region – by Ritesh Pandey, who bagged the Ambedkar Nagar Lok Sabha seat. The SP drew a blank. The BJP won 13 seats from the region, which included the coveted Faizabad Lok Sabha seat.
Varanasi, represented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha, is one of the 30 seats in the eastern part of the state. From this region, the BSP won five seats, while the SP won one – Azamgarh. Apna Dal (Sonelal) won two seats from here.
The Bundelkhand region was swept in 2019 by the BJP, which won all four Lok Sabha seats of Jhansi, Banda, Hamirpur and Jalaun (SC). The parched Bundelkhand region has been seeing the start of some irrigation projects and its residents are now getting safe drinking water. This gives an edge to the ruling party.
