As the Samajwadi Party gears up for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, it is now or never-like situation for the party. After failed attempts to win over the upper caste, the SP is determined to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections on the plank of 85 versus 15, or majority OBCs+Dalits and minorities and 15 per cent upper caste.
The party, in its national convention which concluded on Thursday, has given a call for cementing the unity between Dalits and OBCs for taking on the hegemony of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The SP has drafted three senior OBC leaders, Lalji Verma, Ram Achal Rajbhar and Swami Prasad Maurya who were in the Bahujan Samaj Party for over three decades before they joined the SP in 2021, for this. Indrajit Saroj, also a former BSP leader and now a SP MLA, is also part of the team.
The OBC leaders have been entrusted with the responsibility of drawing the blueprint of a political narrative to bring OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits under the SP umbrella.
Sources in the SP said the party planned to hit the street soon after Diwali for political mobilisation at the grassroots level. The party has chosen the path of agitation from the tehsil to state headquarter level to mobilise the targeted vote bank.
Taking the 2024 electoral battle as the most decisive battle in its history, the SP is now aiming big. Akhilesh Yadav (49), who in his fresh term will lead the party in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and the 2027 Uttar Pradesh elections, said his father and SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav always wanted the SP to become a national party.
“We struggled for it and tried a lot. On this day, when you are giving me another term of five years, we should all take a pledge that the next time we meet the SP will be a national party,” Akhilesh Yadav told the party's national convention on Thursday.
The SP is currently a state party, according to the criteria of the Election Commission of India.
A party has to fulfill any of the three criteria to be declared a national party: winning two per cent of seats in the Lok Sabha (11 seats) from at least three different states in the latest polls, winning six per cent of the total valid votes in at least four states in an election to Lok Sabha or a legislative assembly, in addition to winning four Lok Sabha seats; or being recognised as a state party in at least four states.
The SP has suffered four consecutive defeats at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the last eight years — two in Lok Sabha elections of 2014 and 2019 and two in UP assembly elections held in 2017 and 2022. The next Lok Sabha election in 2024 is going to be an existential battle for the SP. The battle is tough as the BJP has made significant inroads among the OBC dominated constituencies in UP. The SP did make a determined effort to win back the lost constituencies in the 2022 UP Assembly elections and it got partial success.
Akhilesh Yadav, elected as SP president for a third term, asked party workers to bring together the followers of Dalit icon Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar and socialist leader Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, and make the SP a national party.
Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati was quick to hit back at Akhilesh Yadav. Mayawati said, “Akhilesh Yadav’s efforts to project himself as an Ambedkarite is an eyewash (chhalawa) driven by a greed for votes. She alleged that during SP rule in UP, Dalits were neglected and statues of Dalit icons installed during the BSP regime were removed.
