New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s defeat at the hands of the Samajwadi Party-led Opposition in Uttar Pradesh has also led to a surge in the number of MPs from the backward caste communities in the state. This change in the social composition of MPs in the country’s politically most important state has come at the cost of the so-called ‘upper castes’, whose share in the Lok Sabha from UP has dramatically shrunk.
The strategy to field more OBCs and Dalits helped the Opposition outmuscle the BJP in the fight for ‘social justice’. Almost half of the Opposition MPs elected – 21 out of 43 – were OBCs. Nine were Dalits, eight UCs and five Muslims. In comparison, out of the 36 NDA MPs elected, the highest number were UCs (15), followed by OBCs (13) and Dalits (8).
The Wire tabulated the figures for all the parties in the state and found that in the 80 seats, an overwhelming number of MPs elected, 34, were from the OBC castes. In comparison, 23 MPs from ‘UCs’, 18 Dalits and five Muslims were elected.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
If we compare this to the result in 2019, when the BJP and its allies defeated a mahagathbandhan of the SP-Bahujan Samaj Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal, we find a huge leap in the representation of OBCs.
In 2019, UP elected 28 OBCs, 29 UCs, 17 Dalits (all on reserved constituencies) and six Muslims. The Akhilesh Yadav-led SP contested the 2024 election with the strategy of mobilising OBCs, Dalits and Muslims under the PDA slogan (Pichda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak). As the results show, the strategy to provide larger representation to marginalised Hindu communities and voicing concerns about their livelihood issues and constitutional rights has worked wonders for the Opposition.
The INDIA bloc of the SP and Congress won 43 seats out of 80 in an astonishing performance. The BJP and its allies, which had won 64 seats in 2019, slumped to a low of 36. One seat was won by Dalit leader Chandra Shekhar Aazad who contested on the symbol of his Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshiram).
As reported earlier in detail by The Wire, the SP-led Opposition fielded more OBC and Dalit candidates than the BJP in this election, changing the caste game. The BJP and its allies fielded 29 backward caste candidates and 34 from UCs. In comparison, the INDIA bloc, as part of which the SP alone contested 62 seats, fielded 33 OBCs, 22 UCS, 19 Dalits (two on general seats) and six Muslims.
OBCs are the single largest voting segment in UP, making up at least 45% of the state’s population. Around 20% of the state comprises Muslims, while the population of Dalits is 21.5%. The remaining are traditional dominant castes.
Caste composition of MPs elected in 2024
| Community | NDA | INDIA | Other | Total |
| OBC | 13 | 21 | 0 | 34 |
| Upper Caste | 15 | 8 | 0 | 23 |
| Dalits | 8 | 9 | 1 | 18 |
| Muslims | 0 | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| Total | 36 | 43 | 1 | 80 |
Out of the 43 seats won by the Opposition, 16 were won by non-Yadav OBCs. The five Yadavs that won for the SP belonged to the family of the late Mulayam Singh Yadav, including Akhilesh Yadav himself from Kannauj. The P-K formula (Pasi-Kurmi) helped the Opposition crush the BJP in parts of central and east UP where these communities are found in large numbers. Overall, the SP elected seven Kurmi MPs, five from the Pasi (Dalit) community, three from the Maurya/Shakya castes, two Nishads and one each from the Jat, Lodhi and Rajbhar castes.
The 12 MPs from the Kurmi and Pasi castes helped the SP paint the landscape red (colour of caps worn by SP leaders) in central UP and in large parts of East UP.
The Pasis are UP’s second largest Dalit community but are concentrated in the Lucknow, Allahabad, and Azamgarh divisions. Awadesh Prasad, the veteran SP leader who defeated the BJP’s Thakur MP Lallu Singh in Faizabad, where the Ram Mandir stands at the place where the Babri Masjid once stood, is a Pasi. Another senior Pasi leader, one who worked closely with BSP founder Kanshiram, R.K. Chaudhary was finally elected as MP from Mohanlalganj, rural Lucknow, after several failed attempts.
Young Pasi leaders Priya Saroj and Pushpendra Saroj, both aged just 25, also caused major upsets in Machhlishahr and Kaushambi reserved seats, respectively. Priya is the daughter of former MP and sitting MLA Tufani Saroj while Pushpendra is the son of former MP and sitting MP Inderjeet Saroj.
Inderjeet Saroj was also a senior BSP leader before he parted ways with Mayawati.
Senior Kurmi leaders Ram Prasad Chaudhary, Lalji Verma, and Naresh Uttam Patel also won from their constituencies, defeating sitting MPs from the Brahmin, Brahmin and Nishad castes, respectively. Another Kurmi leader Utkarsh Verma caused a major upset as he defeated the controversial Brahmin minister of the BJP Ajay Misra ‘Teni’ in Lakhimpur Kheri. A Nishad candidate Rambhual Nishad scalped former minister Maneka Gandhi in Sultanpur. Senior Kushwaha leader and former minister Babu Singh Kushwaha won from Jaunpur against the BJP’s Thakur candidate despite the backing of local Thakur strongman and former MP Dhananjay Singh to his opponent. The SP’s Dalit card also nearly worked in the general constituency of Meerut, where its candidate Sunita Verma lost to the BJP’s Arun Govil, the on-screen Ram, by a thin margin of around 10,000 votes.
An analysis of the BJP’s elected MPs shows that the largest chunk (13) belonged to Brahmins (8) and Thakurs (5) alone. The BJP also elected 10 OBCs: three Kurmis, two Jats, two Lodhs, and one each from the Teli, Bind and Gurjar communities. The BJP’s allies, RLD and Apna Dal (Soneylal), helped improve the NDA’s share among OBCs, as the two parties won three seats with OBC candidates—Kurmi, Jat and Gurjar.
In 2019, out of the 29 UCs elected in UP across parties, a majority were Brahmins (16), if we add Sonia Gandhi, Varun Gandhi and Maneka Gandhi to that category, and Thakurs (10).
All 17 Dalits were elected on reserved seats. Out of the 28 OBCs elected then, only three were Yadavs while the rest belonged to other backward castes. Four belonged to the Nishad and related riverine castes; three were Lodh; eight belonged to the Kurmi community, four were Jats, two were Gurjar, two Telis and two from the Maurya/Khushwaha castes.
The 2024 results show that not only has the SP increased its success among Yadav candidates, it also made major inroads among the Kurmis, Mauryas and Nishads, as well as among Pasi Dalits. Maligned by large sections of media and the BJP for only catering to Muslims and Yadavs, when it came to representation, Akhilesh Yadav’s performance in 2024 has dismantled this theory by ensuring that more backward caste MPs were elected from the SP than the BJP despite contesting 13 seats less than its principal opponent.
