Lok Sabha Elections 2024: The north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh finds itself in the pole position to determine the results of General Elections every five years. The state sends a whopping 80 Lok Sabha parliamentarians to New Delhi, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party along with its minor allies have managed to win 73 and 62 of these 80 seats in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, respectively.
The BJP’s chief challenger in the state is the Samajwadi Party led by Akhilesh Yadav, a former chief minister and son of three-time Uttar Pradesh chief minister late Mulayam Singh Yadav, considered one of India’s tallest socialist leaders.
Samajwadi Party under Akhilesh Yadav has aligned with the Congress party-led Indian National Democratic Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A.) and is set to contest on lion’s share of eighty seats in the state.
Unlike the 2014 polls, Akhilesh failed to stitch an alliance with another former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Its former ally in the western part of the state, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) also switched the sides to BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government conferred its founder’s father, late former Prime Minister Charan Singh, with Bharat Ratna — India’s highest civilian honour.
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With the Congress party’s popularity at a historic low, for Yadav, the principal challenge remains to save the party’s strongholds amid Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unprecedented popularity and a mix of political equations favouring his Bharatiya Janata Party.
The BJP has been in power in the state assembly of Uttar Pradesh since 2017 when it first displaced Akhilesh Yadav from power. PM Modi himself is a Member of Parliament from the Varanasi constituency of Uttar Pradesh. Modi’s parliamentary placement from the holy city has helped the BJP to sway the support for the party in the adjoining state’s densely populated eastern region known as Poorvanchal.
But after the Samajwadi Party aligned with the Bahujan Samaj Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal, and Congress during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP and allies’ tally came down from 73 to 64 seats, with most losses from the western region of the state.
To counter this, the BJP this time has managed to stitch an alliance with Rashtriya Lok Dal, a party popular among the farmers and Jaat community.
Akhilesh Yadav’s bid to win SP strongholds
As the electoral arithmetic of Uttar Pradesh continues to favour the BJP, Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav has upped the ante to save his party’s strongholds.
Kannauj: The seat, once represented in parliament by iconic socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohiya, remained a stronghold of Samajwadi Party since its founding in 1992. But in 2019, Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav lost to the BJP’s Subrat Pathak by a narrow margin of over 12,000 votes. The party has appointed Dharmendra Yadav, a cousin of Akhilesh Yadav as seat-in-charge of Kannauj.
Azamgarh: Azamgarh too remained a socialist stronghold but shifted gears of power between Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party in recent decades. But in 2022 by-polls, BJP’s Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’, a popular actor in the region, managed to win the seat by a slim margin of over 8,000 votes. Yadav has been named the BJP candidate from Azamgarh again. But Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party managed to induct former BSP MLA Shah Alam alias Guddu Jamali, a popular Muslim face in the region, into the party last week. The party hopes to boost its PDA (Pichhda or backward, Dalit or Scheduled Castes, and Alpasankhyak or minorities) voter base with Jamali on its side.
Mainpuri: Mainpuri remains a Samajwadi Party bastion with the Yadavs managing to hold through the Lok Sabha constituency both during the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav represents the constituency after she won the 2022 Lok Sabha bypolls by over 290,000 votes. The SP has again fielded sitting MP Dimple Yadav from Mainpuri.
Badaun: The BJP managed to win a former SP stronghold after Sanghmitra Maura defeated SP’s Dharmendra Yadav by about 20,000 votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The party has fielded Akhilesh Yadav’s uncle Shivpal Yadav from Badaun.
