SP workers not in favour of any alliance in future

| | Lucknow
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SP workers not in favour of any alliance in future

Monday, 27 May 2019 | PNS | Lucknow

In January this year, when Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav announced a mahagathbandhan of their parties, it was termed as the election story of 2019. When Rashtriya Lok Dal was included in this alliance, political pundits saw it as an invincible combination in Uttar Pradesh.

Their argument was simple, this alliance comprised Dalits, Muslims, backwards and Jats who account for 78 per cent of the voters. The bouquet of the castes and religious denomination of this alliance was spread from western to eastern Uttar Pradesh and also had its footprints in Rohilkhand and Bundelkhand. The results announced on May 23 have punctured the “invincibility” argument and now the alliance stands exposed.

The BSP, SP and RLD have around 41 per cent vote share while the BJP and its ally have over 50 per cent vote share in the just-concluded Lok Sabha election. This shows that the myth of castes moving on the diktat of caste leaders does not hold good any more.

In this scenario, how long the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party will move together? Will they call quits and part ways or plan a bigger strategy for 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections and contest the next election with more vigour?

Social scientists believe that it is the requiem of the alliance. The SP, BSP and RLD are bound to party ways because of their conflict of interest. “During Lok Sabha elections, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav had a common enemy in the form of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was also their fight for survival in UP because both the parties had lost the last Lok Sabha election badly and thus they joined hands. The situation in assembly elections will be totally different. Both Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati are claimant for the post of chief minister. Any agreement on this issue does not seem feasible,” said Nomita P Kumar from the Giri Institute of Development Studies in Lucknow.

Politically speaking, indications have started emanating that SP and BSP will contest the elections separately. A senior SP lawmaker told this reporter on condition of anonymity for obvious reasons that none of the party workers want Akhilesh to go for another alliance.

“The party has suffered whenever it has shared seats with other political parties. It happened in 2017 assembly election when SP formed an alliance with Congress and then in 2019 when we had a tie-up with BSP,” he said.

“In 2019, we not only contested on lesser number of seats but wherever we contested, the BSP and RLD failed to transfer their votes to SP as a result of which we not only lost our traditional seats of Budaun, Firozabad and Kannauj but our tally also did not improve,” he said, adding that we actually lost votes while the BSP gained.

He is not off the mark. The website of Election Commission shows that BSP got 7,44,723 more votes in 2019 compared to 2014 elections while the Samajwadi Party got 24,55,347 less votes in 2019 compared to the last edition of parliamentary election.

Even the votes of the third ally, the RLD, increased by over 7.57 lakh.

There is a feeling in the SP that Akhilesh had committed a hara-kiri by joining hands with Mayawati. And if Akhilesh does not take corrective measures, SP leaders may start deserting the party soon.

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