In the Lok Sabha Elections of 2024, Chandrashekhar Azad, an independent candidate and the head of the Bhim Army, won the Nagina Lok Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav celebrated this victory by a Dalit leader, calling it “a victory for the Pichada (oppressed), Dalit, and Alpsankhyak (Minorities).” The Samajwadi Party won 37 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress won six, and Chandrashekhar Azad’s Aazad Samaj Party won one.
The Bahujan Samaj Party, led by Mayawati, has long been the front-runner for Dalit representation in Uttar Pradesh. But according to the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha Election, which were released on Tuesday, Chandrashekhar Azad received 51.19% of the vote in the western Uttar Pradesh seat, which is primarily inhabited by Muslims and Dalits. By comparison, the BSP received just 1.33% of the vote, placing it in fourth place.
With a margin of more than 1.51 lakh votes, Chandrashekhar Azad prevailed in Nagina, a western UP constituency reserved for Scheduled Castes. Om Kumar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost to Azad; his vote share fell to 36%.
With only 1.33% of the vote, BSP candidate Surendra Pal Singh fared much worse than Manoj Kumar of the Samajwadi Party (SP), who received 10.22% of the vote. Girish Chandra of the BSP defeated Yashwant Singh of the BJP by a margin of 1.66 lakh votes in the 2019 election.
Chandrashekhar Azad remainns the only Dalit leader from Uttar Pradesh serving in the Lok Sabha. In the 80-MP state, BSP was unable to secure any seats.
Prior to the elections, Azad had insisted that ASP retain the Nagina constituency, which caused the talks about an alliance with Akhilesh Yadav’s SP to collapse. Then, Azad vigorously went door-to-door in an apparent attempt to win over Muslim and Dalit voters.
This victory’s meaning is profound. Mayawati had run for and won the 1989 election from the Bijnor constituency, which, after the 2008 delimitation, falls in Nagina.
Courtesy : The Liberal World
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