After RLD Exit, Now SP Faces a New Crisis in UP Over Commitment Towards OBCs

New Delhi: Just as the dust has barely settled on the Rashtriya Lok Dal’s implicit separation from the Samajwadi Party, the Akhilesh Yadav-led Opposition party is facing a new crisis in the form of a disgruntled OBC leader and a disenchanted OBC ally, both key elements of his non-Yadav backward caste political outreach and so-called 'PDA' politics.

PDA stands for Pichda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak (OBC, Dalits and Minorities).

Internal discontent started to surface after two upper-caste leaders with little mass base or role in active politics – actor Jaya Bachchan and retired bureaucrat Alok Ranjan – were among the three candidates nominated by the SP on Tuesday for the upcoming Rajya Sabha election. Meanwhile, senior OBC leader Swami Prasad Maurya, who has been vocal against the BJP's Hindutva politics and Brahmanical orthodoxy, resigned from the post of national general secretary arguing that his political views on the Hindu faith with a view to mobilise Dalits and OBCs were being disregarded and dismissed as mere personal opinion.

Maurya's resignation from the post came after several SP leaders openly criticised him for his critical remarks on the Ramcharitmanas, Hindu religion and the Ram Mandir. Many top SP leaders, unhappy with his views 'against' Hindu faith, had tried to cut the damage by dismissing Maurya's provocative statements as personal opinion.

Maurya, an MLC known for his firebrand Ambedkarite Bahujan politics, wrote to Yadav expressing his grief over what he alleged was “discrimination” faced by him despite enjoying a high ranking post in the party.

In his letter, he said he could "not understand how, as a national general secretary, any statement of mine is dubbed as personal, while there are other national general secretary leaders whose every statement is viewed as the statement of the party."

It was perplexing, he argued, that among office-bearers enjoying the same status, some statements were considered personal while others were given the importance of official party statements.

"If there is discrimination even in the post of national general secretary, then I believe that there is no justification for me to continue in such a discriminatory and insignificant position,” said Maurya, a former cabinet minister and leader of the Opposition.

A discontent ally

Hours after Maurya sent the letter, another OBC leader, Pallavi Patel of the Apna Dal (Kameravadi) – the SP's only remaining ally in the state – came out and disapproved of the party's decision to field two upper-caste leaders in the Rajya Sabha election while ignoring the PDA strategy.

Patel is technically an SP MLA as she fought on an SP symbol in 2022, but is the second-in-command of the Apna Dal (K), which has pockets of influence among the Kurmis, one of the largest backward castes in Uttar Pradesh.

Patel, in an interview to a television channel, hinted that she would not vote in favour of the SP's candidates because the party had ignored Dalits, OBCs and Muslims.

This is significant as the SP, with the potential exit of the nine RLD MLAs, is already one short of ensuring that its third candidate is elected unopposed without any contest. Any rebellion by OBC leaders might pose a fresh challenge for the SP.

The BJP and its allies have sufficient numbers to get seven RS candidates elected.

An eight BJP candidate Sanjay Seth filed his nomination for the RS polls on Thursday, meaning that there will be voting. This opens doors for cross voting and further complicates the situation for the SP and its candidates as the party is already short by one MLA after the exit of the RLD. Meanwhile, the nine RLD MLAs met party chief Jayant Chaudhary in a show of unity ahead of the RS polls.

Patel said that she would not want to be party to "dhokebazi" (fraud) where the "rights of the PDA are being gobbled up". With a direct dig at Jaya Bachchan and Alok Ranjan, Patel said that while the PDA slogan of Akhilesh Yadav meant Pichda Dalit Alpsankhyak, the party leadership was reducing it to a party of “Bachchan and Ranjan” – a reference to their upper-caste surnames.

While actor Bachchan is a multiple-time MP, she has little impact in UP politics or area of influence. Ranjan, who was chief secretary during Yadav's rule, after retirement became the SP leader's advisor. He too, though adding backroom value through his administrative experience and expertise, does not bring any new votes to the SP when it desperately needs to create a second-rung caste leadership to tackle the BJP.

Patel dismissed Ranjan as a "sarkari clerk" and suggested that Bachchan, though a famous actor, was unfit to represent the cause of the OBCs and Dalits.

"This is not some filmy ladai (movie fight). This is a fight for the villages, poor, Dalit, backwards and minorities,” said Patel, who had in 2022 defeated BJP’s deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya in a much-hyped contest.

"When you want their votes but are not honest with their representation, I will not be involved in that dhokha (fraud)," said Patel.

In 2022, the SP improved its tally in UP from 47 to 111 as it built alliances with smaller OBC-based parties and also accommodated senior Bahujan leaders into its party organisation. Questions are also being raised on why the SP did not field a single Muslim even though the community had cast its vote in favour of the SP in unprecedented numbers.

There is speculation that Patel wanted the SP to nominate her mother Krishna Patel, the president of the Apna Dal Kameravadi, to the RS. Patel's sister Anupriya Patel is a key BJP ally and heads the other faction of the Apna Dal, the Apna Dal (Soneyal). The two parties were created after the BJP engineered a split in the main Apna Dal party to appropriate the legacy of Sonelal Patel, a Kurmi leader who was popular with his community in the Allahabad-Varanasi belts.

Maurya's resignation from the national general secretary post was curiously timed with the nominations for the RS polls. Interestingly, Patel also defended Maurya and criticised the SP for allowing its leaders to target him for his comments despite his stature.

By not sending a strong message through the RS polls, the SP seems to have missed an opportunity to demonstrate an honesty towards the PDA slogan. In caste politics, representation to marginalised groups is among the key ways of connecting with the electorate.

The BJP has in previous years mastered this art by appeasing lower OBCs while retaining the trust of its upper-caste core to build a rainbow of Hindu consolidation. Out of the seven RS candidates nominated by the saffron party, four are OBC. These are former Congress leader R.P.N. Singh (a Sainthwar), Amarpal Maurya (Maurya), former MP Chaudhari Tejveer Singh (Jat) and former MLA Sangeeta Balwant (Bind). The remaining three nominees are upper caste – a Brahmin, a Thakur and a Jain.

In contrast, the SP, which is on the backfoot, nominated two upper caste leaders with little involvement in politics and a Dalit (former MP Ramji Lal Suman).

SP leaders pile criticism on Maurya

On February 14, convening a press conference, Swami Prasad Maurya, when asked if he would now also resign from the party, said he would take a decision after observing Akhilesh's next step. “The ball is in his court,” said Maurya, who spent most of his political career in the Bashujan Samaj Party before a stint with the BJP and joined the SP ahead of the 2022 assembly polls.

From the start, he appeared to be a misfit in the SP, especially after he developed a knack for criticising the Hindu religion and Brahmanical supremacy for subjugating OBCs, Dalits and tribals. The SP has for long believed that it cannot replicate the Dravidian model of politics and antagonise the powerful and numerically important upper-caste voters in UP, especially with the threat of communal polarisation looming large and a divided OBC and Dalit vote.

Over the last year, Maurya has triggered political controversies with his statements which range from demanding that casteist and misogynist verses be deleted from the Ramcharitmanas to dismissing the Hindu religion as a “dhokha” to entrap gullible tribals, OBCs and Dalits. While his comments have attracted a shoe attack, black flags and an ink attack on him along with numerous police complaints and calls for violence against him, his party colleagues, especially UC, have also censured him for raking up religion.

The criticism against Maurya is two-fold. First, his comments antagonise Hindu voters in a deeply religious and conservative society. Second, it distracts the narrative from caste mobilisation to religion and thus poses a challenge of communal polarisation as the SP carries the baggage of allegations of 'Muslim appeasement' and catering only to the Yadav caste.

SP MP Dimple Yadav in December 2023 distanced herself from Maurya’s repeated attacks on the Hindu faith, saying they were his personal views and did not reflect the stand of the SP. Months before that, senior SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav, the party president’s uncle, had also tried to downplay Maurya's remarks by saying that a political party was under the compulsion to accommodate both “good and crooked people”.

In January, SP MLA Rakesh Pratap Singh said he had complained to the party supremo against Maurya, following which Akhilesh Yadav told his legislators to refrain from commenting on religion.

Last week, another powerful SP MLA Manoj Pandey, who had organised a programme for Yadav to unveil a statue of Hindu deity Parshuram, an avatar of Vishnu, came out with the strongest censure of Maurya. Pandey called Maurya “demented” for not listening to the directions of the party supremo. “A person who has lost his mental stability, will keep talking like this,” said Pandey.

Maurya was upset by this long trajectory of criticism from his own colleagues. In his resignation letter, he explained his strategy of raking up the “honour” and “respect” of the OBCs, SCs and Dalits to lure them back from the “spider web” of the BJP. He said he wanted to use “scientific temper” to connect with these communities and increase the mass support of the SP. However, Maurya said, some “small and big leaders tried to blunt this narrative by dismissing it as ‘Maurya’s personal statements’”.

Last month, the Supreme Court had put a stay on the criminal proceedings against Maurya for his comments against the Ramcharitmanas and asked the state government why it was being so "touchy".

What this means for the SP

At a time when the SP should have been preparing itself for the 2024 Lok Sabha and sealing its alliances, it faces the task of firefighting a potentially damaging internal rebellion by important OBC leaders. Post the 2022 assembly elections, it has already lost two important allies – the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party in east UP and the RLD of Jayant Chaudhary in west UP. The exit of the Apna Dal (Kameravadi) and Maurya will be nothing short of a disaster for the SP, immediately as well as in the long-term.

Maurya's resignation not only coincides with the nomination for the RS polls but also closely follows the SP declaring Dharmendra Yadav as its Lok Sabha candidate in Budaun. Maurya's daughter Sanghmitra Maurya is the sitting MP from Budaun. She won in 2019 on a BJP ticket when her father was a minister in the BJP government. She had defeated Dharmendra Yadav, a cousin of Akhilesh Yadav and a former MP from the constituency.

With the Budaun seat and the RS berth out of bounds, there was a looming question on Sanghamitra Maurya's political future. While her father shifted ranks to the SP in 2022, resigning as minister, she continues to be a BJP MP.

The situation will get complicated if Maurya decides to stay back in the SP and his daughter is fielded again by the BJP against the SP's candidate.

Meanwhile, in a bid to control damage, senior SP leader Ram Govind Chaudhary wrote to party president Akhilesh Yadav requesting him to not accept Maurya's resignation as it was in the interest of the party to retain him.

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