Why Samajwadi Party is swinging focus from Muslims & Yadavs to Dalit & OBC vote in UP

The SP has announced 28 OBC and 14 Dalit candidates in UP, while giving tickets to only 4 Muslims. Political experts say it’s a tactic to broaden its base and counter BJP’s ‘polarisation’.

SHIKHA SALARIA, (Edited by Asavari Singh)

Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party has nominated 28 OBC and 14 Dalit candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh in what political experts are calling a “bold and calculated strategy” to broaden its electoral base and counter the BJP’s “polarising” tactics.

Often accused by the BJP of “favouring Muslims”, the SP has fielded only 4 Muslim candidates in constituencies where the community has a sizeable population. Instead, the party is now concentrating on wooing the OBCs, the largest voting bloc in UP, comprising 40 per cent of the population, along with Dalits who constitute 20 per cent.

Out of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats, the SP is contesting 62. Its INDIA alliance partners are contesting the remaining 18 seats, with 17 for Congress and one for the TMC in Bhadohi. So far, the SP has announced a total of 57 candidates, which includes 10 from upper castes, other than those from the OBC, Dalit, and Muslim communities.

The party’s candidate selection also reflects a detailed caste calculus tailored to suit the demographics of each constituency.

Among the 28 OBC candidates, four are Yadavs (counting Akhilesh’s wife Dimple, although she is a Thakur by birth), while the rest include four Vermas, three Nishads, two Patels, two Jats, and one each from the Kushwaha, Pal, Rajbhar, Bind, and Gurjar communities. The 14 Dalit candidates include 6 Jatavs and 8 non-Jatavs.

Even in the 2022 UP state elections, as political analyst Badri Narayan had earlier pointed out, there was a shift from the usual Muslim-Yadav (M-Y) alliance of the Samajwadi Party on one side and the “Hindu-Muslim binary” on the other, with smaller caste groups becoming more prominent in how political parties distributed their tickets.

Now, with the Dalit voter base of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) weakening and an alliance with Congress in place, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav is seizing the opportunity to broaden the party’s reach, while also banking on the continued support of Muslims and Yadavs, said Mirza Asmer Beg, a professor of political science at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

“However, even a section of Yadavs voted for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, so it remains to be seen how this move fares on the ground,” he added. 

From M-Y to ‘backward’ politics

Ahead of the elections, the Samajwadi Party launched its “PDA” slogan—standing for picchhde (backward), Dalit, and alpsankhyak (minorities). This has signalled its concerted attempt to return to its foundational backward-class politics, including trying to attract Dalits who have traditionally supported the Mayawati-led BSP.

With the BSP’s vote bank eroding, the SP has poached several Dalit and Muslim leaders, including current and former MPs and MLAs from the party, especially in the wake of parting ways with it after fighting the 2019 Lok Sabha polls together.

SP leaders now claim that even traditional BSP voters are shifting their allegiance.

“While all other parties have given tickets to Dalits on reserved seats, SP has given tickets to our community even on two general seats (Ayodhya and Meerut),” said Mithai Lal Bharti, who switched over to the SP from the BSP in 2019 and is now the national president of SP’s Ambedkar Vahini. “This is the real win of social justice.”

Bharti told ThePrint that the SP had adopted the principles once espoused by BSP founder Kanshi Ram. “The SP has also fielded upper castes and minorities. This is in line with Kanshi Ram ji’s slogan, ‘Jiski jitni samkhya bhari, uski utni bhagidaari (Political participation in proportion to population)’, which was published in the Samajwadi Party’s bulletin three years back. The SP has given real meaning to the slogan.”

Criticising BJP leaders, including Ayodhya MP Lallu Singh and Nagaur candidate Jyoti Mirdha, for their controversial remarks about “changing the Constitution,” Bharti said that the Dalits were united against this idea.

“BJP leaders including MPs and their candidates have been openly claiming that they want to change the Constitution. The Dalit society wants to save the Constitution something that the BSP is not in a position to do,” he said.

SP spokesperson Manoj Kaka told ThePrint that the party is doubling down on its historical focus on backward politics, a strategy shaped by its founder “Netaji” Mulayam Singh Yadav and ideologue Ram Manohar Lohia. He pointed out that before the BJP started wooing OBCs and Dalits, it was the Samajwadi Party that espoused the slogan “Sansapa ne bandhi gaanth, pichda pave sau me saath” (Socialists have taken a vow, backwards should get 60 out of 100).

“We are trying to walk the road that Netaji took,” said SP spokesperson Juhie Singh on the party’s PDA tilt. “We are committed to ensuring the participation of PDA, including women, and carrying out the caste census.”

According to Singh, however, their candidates have not been “parachuted” in for strategic reasons. “The SP is committed to the proper representation to SC/STs. We have fielded Dalits even on two non-reserved seats, not because it’s just a strategy but because the candidates really fit into their constituencies,” she said.

What about the Muslims?

Despite its tag as an MY party, SP has chosen to nominate only four Muslim candidates as it shifts its focus to OBCs and Dalits. This pivot from religion-based to caste-based politics is designed to counter the BJP, with the SP betting that Muslims and Yadavs will remain loyal supporters, according to political experts.

“It has been observed in the past that whenever the SP and BSP field Muslim candidates, there is sharp polarisation of Hindu voters too—which helps the BJP candidate,” explained Shashikant Pandey, head of the political science department at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University. “By fielding fewer Muslims and more non-Yadav OBCs and Dalits, the SP is trying to diffuse that possibility this time”

Fielding more non-Yadavs and Dalits is predicated on the assumption that Yadavs and Muslims will vote for the SP anyway, Pandey added. “This is a calculated move. It can either help boost the SP or be disastrous, but that only time can tell,” he said.

Another factor influencing SP’s candidate selection is weakening BJP’s accusations of appeasement politics towards Muslims, notes AMU professor Mirza Asmer Beg, quoted earlier.

“In the past, it has been seen that Akhilesh has steered away from mentioning the word ‘secular’ to avoid the BJP attacking it for being a party which favours Muslims,” he said. “SP has realised that only Muslim-Yadav combination doesn’t work and it has to expand its base into the OBCs, which form the largest vote base in UP, and the Dalits.”

However, SP spokesperson Singh insisted that that fielding only four Muslims did not mean that the party was de-emphasising the community or trying to counter the BJP’s polarisation tactics. “Seats like Saharanpur and Amroha, where we have traditionally fielded Muslim faces have gone to the Congress,” she said. “The BJP keeps raking this issue (favouring Muslims) as a poll plank but I think we have moved ahead from the rhetoric and there are actual issues on the ground for which we are getting support from SCs and women.”

Courtesy : The Print

Note: This news is originally published in theprint.com and was used solely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes exclusively for Human Rights.