NEW DELHI: In a setback to Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav, pre-poll alliances have failed him for the third consecutive time in the just-concluded Uttar Pradesh assembly election.
The SP had experimented with pre-poll alliances for the 2017 UP assembly and 2019 Lok Sabha elections but did not succeed. The party’s latest attempt at stitching a coalition faced a similar fate.
The SP aligned with the Congress in the 2017 UP assembly election and with Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. However, the two experiments failed.
For the 2022 UP polls, it tried to cobble together alliances with five smaller parties wielding influence in certain pockets of the state. However, this too failed to pay dividends.
2022 UP assembly election
The SP forged a pre-poll alliance with Om Prakash Rajbhar-led Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), Jayant Chaudhary-headed Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), Shivpal Yadav’s Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (PSP), Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) and Mahaan Dal.
Of the 403 seats, the SP fielded candidates on 345 seats, RLD on 33, SBSP on 19 and Apna Dal (K) on six seats.
In 2017, SBSP had tied up with the BJP and contested on eight seats. It won four and polled 0.7 per cent of the vote. Later, it broke up with the BJP to join hands with Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). However, it jumped ship and entered into an electoral alliance with the SP.
The RLD, which has a base among the Jats in western UP, did not win any Lok Sabha seat either in the 2014 or 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In the 2017 UP assembly election, it fielded candidates on 277 seats but won just one. It forfeited its security deposit in 266 seats and garnered 1.78 per cent of the vote.
It was believed that the RLD might fare better due to the farmers’ protest over the three farm laws which were repealed in the last winter session of Parliament. The Jats, who are an influential farming community in western UP, had lent strong support to the protest being led by farmers primarily from Punjab.
After it was clear that BJP was on its way to win the election, SP spokesperson Rohit Agarwal said in a post on Koo, "In a democracy, the people are paramount, if the people like the bulldozer government, then we will still talk about women’s security for the right price of the farmers’ crops for employment. People need government for public interest, not bulldozers."
2017 UP assembly election
The SP had contested the 2012 UP assembly election independently and won a majority. Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav had then handed over the reins of the government to his son Akhilesh Yadav.
After five years of governance, the SP aligned with the Congress for the 2017 assembly election. The alliance was touted as a “masterstroke”. The coming together of Akhilesh and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was much hyped and several slogans were coined, such as “UP ke do ladke” (two boys of UP) and “UP ko ye saath pasand hai” (UP likes this partnership).
However, this alliance could not stop the BJP juggernaut. The party won a whopping 312 seats and ended up with 325 along with its allies.
SP and Congress parted ways soon after.
2019 Lok Sabha election
Despite the bitter experience in 2017, the SP repeated the experiment in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. It entered into a pre-poll alliance with BSP.
The “bua-bhatija jodi” (aunt and nephew combination of Mayawati and Akhilesh) performed better than in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Contesting separately, the SP had won five of the 80 seats while the BSP could not open its account. However, in 2019, while BSP’s tally rose to 10, SP’s remained the same at five seats.
As in 2017, SP split with BSP soon after the election results were announced.
After the two experiments, which did not help the SP much, the party again decided to contest the 2022 state polls in alliance with smaller parties. However, even this experiment has not helped the party come to office.
