With an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the Bharatiya Janata Party has launched serious efforts to win back the non-Yadav Other Backward Classes (OBC) leaders into the party fold.
Several non-Yadav OBCs leaders had left the BJP ahead of the UP Assembly election earlier this year and joined the Samajwadi Party. Efforts by the state BJP leaders are underway as per the direction of the party’s central leadership.
The move is aimed at bolstering the social coalition of the party before the 2024 general elections and regaining the non-Yadav OBC vote bank.
Sources in the BJP said that channels of communication had been opened with several of these leaders and also leaders of parties which had been allies of the BJP in the past and represented specific caste groups.
Leaders like Swami Prasad Maurya, Dara Singh Chauhan, Dharam Singh Saini, Madhuri Verma, Vinay Shakya and others had left the BJP in the run-up to the 2022 Uttar Pradesh polls and crossed over to the SP. The Samajwadi Party had realised that the BJP’s capture of non-Yadav OBC votes in the 2014, 2017 and 2019 polls had left the Akhilesh Yadav-led party with only Yadavs and Muslims, denting its strength in the state.
Though the desertion of the non-Yadav OBCs leaders did not impact the electoral fortunes of the BJP, it did help create a political narrative that helped the Samajwadi Party to take its tally from 47 in 2017 assembly polls to 125 along with its allies in 2022 UP Assembly elections.
Swami Prasad Maurya, the tallest OBC leader to desert the BJP, lost the last assembly election from Fazilnagar assembly seat in Deoria district.
The defection of the OBC leaders ahead of UP Assembly election compelled the BJP to drop the idea of denying ticket to many sitting party MLAs. In several assembly constituencies the BJP had to really work hard to pacify angry party cadres who had wanted a change of the candidate in their constituency.
“Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the party wants all the communities from whom we gained support in 2019 to be back in its fold," said a BJP leader.
The sources said the central leaders were also involved in this mission. The party leaders are in constant touch with Om Prakash Rajbhar, president of Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP), who has parted company with his alliance partner Samajwadi Party.
OBCs comprise nearly 40 per cent of the vote in Uttar Pradesh and the BJP's success in the state has been attributed to the way it has been able to shore up support among non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits in the state.
With alliances with the Apna Dal (Sonelal) led by Union minister Anupriya Patel and previously with the SBSP, the 2019 polls saw the National Democratic Alliance poll 51.19 per cent of the votes and register a big victory despite the alliance between the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
