How SP managed to stun BJP in Uttar Pradesh despite Ram Temple hype

Samajwadi Party’s caste calculations, runaway inflation, and unemployment all came together to create a heady cocktail, enough to stop the BJP juggernaut in UP

The road to Delhi passes through Lucknow. The has been proved yet again in the 2024 general elections.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav with Awadhesh Prasad, the party candidate from Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency, during the election campaign rally in Ayodhya. (Photo from X)

The opposition INDIA bloc is leading in 43 Lok Sabha seats, whereas BJP is ahead in 34 seats in Uttar Pradesh, as per the data at 8 pm. The highlight of the elections was the resurgence of Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party (SP).

The crowning achievement must be the victory of its candidate Awadesh Prasad over saffron stalwart Lallu Singh in Ayodhya, Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency.

The result from the constituency that hosts the Ram Mandir, the place which had once catapulted the party into the big league more than three decades ago and one that was designed to take the BJP over the 400-mark in the Lok Sabha, epitomised all that went wrong with the party.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the SP had managed to win just 5 seats in UP as it had then contested 37 out of the state’s 80 seats as part of an alliance with the BSP. The BJP had then swept the polls, bagging 62 seats, with the BSP getting 10. In the 2014 general elections, the BJP won 72 seats in the state.

Notes Lucknow-based analyst Anshuman Shukla: "The writing was on the wall. It’s just that everyone was blinded and missed it.”

In the UP Assembly elections in 2017, the BJP won an astonishing 312 out of 403 seats; but in 2022, the BJP numbers in the state assembly had reduced to 255.

"To suggest that the BJP was going to sweep the general elections 2024 polls is a bit mystifying,” says Shukla.

The party seems to have taken a hit in the rural areas with the talk about Constitution being amended, a subject which is extremely sensitive to the roughly 20% Dalit population of the state, which hero worships Bhim Rao Ambedkar, architect of the Indian Constitution, and they have shifted their loyalties to Akhilesh Yadav and the SP.

Confident of retaining its core Muslim-Yadav voter base and seeking to make inroads into the votes of non-Yadav OBCs, who were seen to be consolidated in favour of the BJP, Akhilesh Yadav adopted different tactics. The party’s vote share increased when it joined hands with smaller parties, who drew the support of non-Yadav OBCs.

Said an SP leader: "The party has accommodated candidates from other communities to reach out to voters of other OBC groups and upper castes”.

The SP chief coined a new slogan for the votebase he banked on this time, expanding from the traditional Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) to Pichde (backward classes or OBCs), Dalits, Alpasankhyak (minorities) (PDA). It proved to be a fighting combination.

The ticket distribution told the story. While five SP tickets went to Yadavs, it fielded 27 candidates belonging to other OBCs, 11 upper castes (including four Brahmins, two Thakurs, two Vaishyas and one Khatri) and four Muslims. It nominated 15 Dalit candidates in SC-reserved seats. The ensemble was complete.

In the glitz of Ram Temple and a media overkill of the Modi-Amit Shah speeches, the tendency to overlook local issues like rampant unemployment, scandalous examination paper scams and runaway inflation were forgotten, but not by the voter and the silent majority.

Says SP leader Salim Sherwani: ``There was hidden anger in the youth in UP. There was no impact of the Ram Mandir, despite attempts to whip it up, as is evident in the results. Joblessness remains acute; young men who were 20 years old in 2014 when Modi was sworn in for the first time, are 30 today without any change in status. You may have the gift of the gab, but delivery has to be on the ground.”