Omar Rashid 
New Delhi: Within the grand battle of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) attempts to consolidate Hindus versus the Samajwadi Party’s strategy to mobilise marginalised Hindu castes and Muslims, lie several smaller contests that are shaping the political mood in Uttar Pradesh, ahead of the by-elections on nine assembly seats.
Since the results on the nine seats have no bearing on the popularity of the government in the 403-member House, the bypolls have become more about the larger political messaging by both sides than the actual outcome on these particular seats.
At present, the BJP and its allies hold five out of the nine seats. The remaining four are with the SP. Even if either side is able to cause upsets on a couple of seats, it is unlikely to have any ramifications on the overall picture. The 2027 Assembly elections are still more than two years away.
The Dalit factor
Of the nine assembly seats that are due for the bypolls, Ghaziabad is perhaps the safest constituency for the ruling BJP. The party has won it six times since 1991 while the Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party have won it only once each.
The only time the SP – today the main Opposition in the state – secured the seat was in a bypoll two decades ago. In the last two elections, in 2017 and 2022, the BJP’s Atul Garg, who was elected as MP this summer, won the Ghaziabad Assembly seat by margins of more than 70,000 and 1 lakh, respectively. Even by UP standards, these are big margins and unassailable, at least on paper.
The urban seat, close to Delhi, has been dominated by candidates from the so-called “upper castes.” It is in this background that SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s experiment of fielding a Dalit candidate from Ghaziabad, an unreserved seat, has offered a new challenge to the BJP.
It is unusual for parties to field Dalits on general seats. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, Yadav fielded Dalit candidates on two highly-prized seats, Meerut and Faizabad (which houses the Ram Mandir), losing the former by a narrow margin and scripting a historic win in the latter constituency to deliver a body blow to the saffron party’s Ram Mandir card.
Buoyed by the success of that strategy, Yadav has tried it again in the bypolls, by fielding Singh Raj Jatav, a Dalit, from Ghaziabad, where the party has traditionally favoured “upper caste” candidates. Through his nomination, the SP hopes to attract the votes of the sizable Dalit Jatav community and put up a real challenge to the BJP candidate.
However, in the bigger picture, it is part of the SP’s concerted attempts to reach out to the Dalit vote in the state, which after the shrinking of the BSP has been up for grabs. In other words, the contest in Ghaziabad is more about political messaging and consolidation of support bases than the outcome. This is perhaps true for all nine seats.
Speaking with The Wire, Jatav said he was confident that the PDA (Pichda Dalit Alpsankhyak) strategy of the SP would work in Ghaziabad and fielding a Dalit like him would prove to be the turning point. He said the Dalits did not trust the BJP and the threats on the constitution as well as the reservation for scheduled castes loomed large.
“I am grateful to Akhilesh Yadav that he has given honour and respect to people from this community (Dalit),” said Jatav, on his nomination. Jatav also said he was trying to unite the non-Jatav and Jatav Dalit votes.
Given that the BSP and the Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshiram) are also in the fray in the bypolls, the direction of the Dalit vote is bound to be a key factor in the overall analysis and provide hints for social engineering in the future.
Both SP, BJP eyeing OBC votes
The OBC factor is also in flux. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the BJP lost large chunks of its OBC vote to the SP and Congress alliance. The nine bypolls could provide us a glimpse of the existing political mood of the OBCs, whether their support to the BJP is actually waning or has the saffron party managed to consolidate them after a poor performance in June. The BJP has banked on the OBC-upper caste card in the bypolls. Out of the nine candidates fielded by its alliance, five are OBCs, three are UCs and one is a Dalit (reserved seat).
Both sides, the SP and the NDA of the BJP, have relied on former legislators, former candidates or kin of former legislators in the high-stake contest.
The BJP has fielded Suresh Awasthi and Ramveer Singh from Sishamau (Kanpur) and Kundarki (Moradabad) seats. Both have previously contested assembly elections on BJP tickets. In Katehari (Ambedkar Nagar), Majhawan (Mirzapur), Meerapur (Muzaffarnagar) and Phulpur (Prayagraj), the NDA has again nominated former legislators Dharmraj Nishad, Shuchismita Maurya and Deepak Patel.
In Khair (Aligarh), the BJP has nominated Surender Diler, the son of a former MP who passed away earlier this year, while in Ghaziabad it has fielded a party worker Sanjeev Sharma. The most interesting choice, however, has been in Karhal (Mainpuri), where the saffron party has fielded Anujesh Pratap Singh, a distant relative of Akhilesh Yadav against Yadav’s nephew and former MP Tej Pratap Singh Yadav.
Anujesh Pratap Singh belongs to the Yadav community and is married to Sandhya Yadav, the sister of Dharmendra Yadav, SP MP and cousin of Akhilesh Yadav. Anujesh’s mother Urmila Devi is a former two-time MLA from the SP. He contested from Ghiror seat in 2007 on an SP ticket but lost. The family parted ways with the SP in 2019 and joined the BJP.
The BJP’s offensive strategy of fielding a Yadav in Karhal has two elements to it. The BJP appears confident that its non-Yadav OBC support base will stand by it as it attempts to dent the SP’s Yadav votebase. Second, by fielding a Yadav, albeit on a difficult seat, the BJP has tried to project a picture of Hindu unity and targeted the SP’s core base.
Akhilesh Yadav found it odd that the BJP, which often targets his party for being a dynastic party, had fielded his relative in Karhal.
“Those who were against parivarvad, how did they become ‘rishtedarwadi’ today,” Akhilesh asked in Mainpuri, taking a humorous dig at the BJP. Parivar means family in Hindi, while rishtedar refers to relatives.
SP sticks to Pichda Dalit Alpsankhyak (PDA) strategy
The SP’s PDA strategy is reflected in the caste and communal identities of its candidates. It has fielded two Dalits (including one on a general seat), four Muslims and three OBCs. The three backward caste candidates include two non-Yadavs – Jyoti Bind in Majhawan and Shobawati Verma in Katehari. Bind is the daughter of Ramesh Bind, former BSP MLA and former BJP MP. Verma is the wife of senior SP leader and Ambedkar Nagar MP Lalji Verma.
The bypolls could also have a bearing on the Muslim representation in the UP Assembly. Muslims form almost one-fifth of the state’s population. However, only 31 out of the 403 MLAs in the current Assembly are Muslims. That’s less than 8%. Out of these 31, 27 are from the SP alone.
The SP has fielded four Muslims in the bypolls. Sumbul Rana is nominated from Meerapur in Muzaffarnagar. She is the daughter-in-law of former MP Kadir Rana. Mujtaba Siddiqui, former MLA, is the SP’s candidate in Phulpur while the party has fielded former MLA Mohammad Rizwan in Kundarki (Moradabad) and Naseem Solanki, the wife of former MLA Irfan Solanki who was disqualified after being convicted in a criminal case.
Although the election campaign is yet to catch pace, the stage has already been set with an exchange of slogans. After Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, in a bid to unite Hindus, said ‘Katoge toh batoge’ (Divided we will be slaughtered), the SP responded with its own catchphrase, ‘Judenge toh jeetenge’ (united, we win).
On November 2, Akhilesh Yadav took to X (formerly Twitter) to target the BJP for its slogan. He called it a “negative slogan” and said it was a sign of the BJP’s “disappointment and failure.”
“This slogan will be recorded in the history of the country as the ‘worst slogan’ and will prove to be the last ‘literal nail’ in the final chapter of their political downfall,” said Yadav.