With the division of seats between the Samajwadi Party and Congress announced in a press conference in Lucknow on February 22, the INDIA alliance becomes the first major alliance in Uttar Pradesh to declare seats for each partner. The National Democratic Alliance, on the other hand, surprisingly seems to be lagging behind in dividing seats between its partners – the SBSP led by Om Prakash Rajbhar, the NISHAD party led by Sanjay Nishad, Apna Dal led by Anupriya Patel and RLD led by Jayant Chaudhary. Amidst the rumours of Jayant Chaudhry’s disgruntlement with the seat sharing in NDA, two significant questions have come up: what prompted the SP-Congress alliance in UP, and what can it achieve?
Electoral compulsions and ideological similarities
Trying to recover from the election debacles in the 2022 assembly and later urban body elections, Akhilesh Yadav coined the formula of a PDA – Pichda, Dalit, Alpasankhyak (Backwards, Dalits, Minorities) alliance. While voting patterns of past elections show that the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies still command a sizeable share of votes of non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits in UP, the Samajwadi Party realised that there is a significant section of these communities who are getting disenchanted with the BJP. Factors like agrarian issues, inflation and joblessness among these communities were considered to be the major forces behind this. Accordingly, the party prepared a strategy to reach out to these communities at the booth level and establish a direct connect.
Working on similar lines albeit much earlier and on an all-India level, Rahul Gandhi first launched the Bharat Jodo Yatra and later the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra to galvanise anti-BJP sentiment among these communities. “Congress has been consistently raising the issue of caste census, socio-economic justice and joblessness. The two yatras of Rahul Gandhi have attempted to make the Dalit-OBC population of the country realise that their future is not safe with the BJP,” says UP Congress general secretary Anil Yadav.
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While the SP succeed in getting majority of Muslim and Yadav votes in 2022 as per CSDS data, it was not so successful in attracting Dalit and other OBC voters, due to it being seen as a Muslim-Yadav party. On the other hand, past surveys done by People’s Pulse in UP indicate that despite Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s positive image, these communities did not vote for the Congress due to the perception that it’s not in the fight in the bi-polar 2022 election.
“With both parties now coming together in an alliance, these shortcomings could be overcome. While the Congress can soften the image of the SP and widen the vote base of the party, the SP can increase the winnability perception of the former,” says Lucknow-based veteran journalist Siddharth Kalhans. It is also to be noted that the 2022 surveys indicated that a majority of Muslim voters were clearly saying that though in 2022 they are voting for the Mahagathbandhan, they will vote for the Congress in 2024. The SP was wary of losing them in a crucial election like 2024. “It therefore seems that electoral compulsions and similar ideological goals perhaps brought the two parties together,” he sums up.
What can the alliance achieve in UP?
The Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, while passing through UP, attracted huge crowds and was joined by SP leaders and cadres alike. Meanwhile, the incumbent UP government is facing the ire of unemployed youth protesting against paper leaks in constable and RO/ARO recruitment exams. Amidst these developments, some experts feel that the euphoria and positive atmosphere that the BJP created through the Ram Mandir inauguration in early January seems to be subsiding. But will this mean that the INDIA alliance can properly challenge the NDA in 2024 in UP, bringing down its numbers from 64 (62 to BJP and two to Apna Dal Sonelal) in 2019? A closer look at the data of past elections and current trends might give us a clearer picture.
The general understanding is that the vote share of the Mahagathbandhan led by Akhilesh Yadav in the 2022 assembly election was more than 38.5%, if we include the Congress. This amounts to approximately 30 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state. However, vote percentage alone does not amount to seats in India’s first-past-the-post system. A party could be getting votes across a state which might look impressive in total, and yet fail to win a single seat. The Bahujan Samaj Party’s performance in UP during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections is a classic example of this, as the party failed to win a single seat despite polling 19.77% of the total votes. In this scenario, the seats won/leads logic appears more appropriate to make a projection.
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In terms of seats won in the assembly, the Mahagathbandhan (including the Congress) collectively led in 127 assembly segments which also roughly converts to around 25 Lok Sabha seats (as one Lok Sabha seat is made of five assembly seats in UP, generally). By this logic, the NDA could be limited to around 55 seats in the 2024 elections by the INDIA alliance, which is far less than the 64 it won in 2019. But in the 2022 assembly election, the BJP contested in alliance with the Apna Dal and Nishad Party only, and now it also has the support of the SBSP and RLD, who jumped sides after the elections. Adding their numbers to the NDA seat tally of 2022 results in the saffron alliance jumping to 287 seats, which amounts to around 58 Lok Sabha seats.
But can the INDIA alliance limit the BJP to even those numbers?
Narrative, social engineering and political churn
Despite shortcomings, the BJP is currently the most prepared party for the upcoming elections, with enormous organisational and government machinery and huge financial resources at its disposal. Major surveys show that though the popularity of Rahul Gandhi has increased, that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is still unmatchable. Further, its narrative of “Ram, Roti and Rashtra” (Hindutva, beneficiary policies and hyper nationalism) has still not lost its shine, despite the opposition’s attempts.
However in UP, it has always been a battle between social engineering and narrative. And the SP-Congress alliance seems to have taken the first step to carve out a greater social base, charged with an anti-BJP narrative. “It has been 12 years since the BSP lost power in UP and it has not recovered since then,” says Dr Rama Shankar, a fellow at Ambedkar University Delhi and the author of a book on UP’s EBCs. “A large section of the BSP vote base – Dalits and EBCs – which was disgruntled is definitely available and trying to find new political options.” However, he also cautions that the voting memory of these groups for Congress is very old and they have not liked the SP due to a history of social conflicts.
Given the above factors, what the SP-Congress alliance will achieve will greatly depend on the right messaging, better candidates and creating a larger social base. With a freefall in BSP’s situation in UP and its absence from all major political interventions and issues, various social blocs and castes previously loyal to it are looking for options. If the SP-Congress alliance succeeds in creating a broadened social base, it’s possible for the INDIA alliance to at least stop the BJP from gaining in UP above the 2019 numbers – and even that would be no small achievement.
Rajan Pandey is a freelance journalist. He is also associated with Hyderabad-based survey agency People’s Pulse.
