By Ram Babu Tiwari
The Samajwadi Party’s difficulties are mounting ahead of next year’s Uttar Pradesh Assembly election. Western UP is where the damage looks sharpest. On present evidence the party appears to be slipping out of the principal contest. The fight is slowly narrowing to one between the NDA and the BSP. The SP looks set to shrink into third place. The largest reason is that it no longer displays a sturdy social base of its own. The Muslim vote, meanwhile, is being cut into on several fronts. In western UP, the party now looks at its weakest. The trouble is not only the activity of rivals. The real crisis is the party’s own social arithmetic. The PDA through which Akhilesh Yadav hopes to gather Backward, Dalit and minority votes on one platform does not travel as easily in this region. The Yadav vote has limited weight here. In Dalit politics the BSP remains an established name, and Mayawati’s older association with western UP still matters. Chandra Shekhar Azad, too, is at work among Dalit voters. In western UP the SP’s politics has long rested on the MY equation. Claims of Muslim displeasure with the party are now in circulation. Chandra Shekhar Azad is playing a separate card. Congress MP Imran Masood keeps charging the SP with neglect of Muslims. Owaisi’s party is active in the region as well. Inside the SP, rivalry among Muslim leaders continues. The fear that the Muslim vote may scatter is adding to the party’s anxiety. Among other communities the SP’s hold looks weak as well. Akhilesh Yadav’s remarks on the Jats have deepened resentment. The Gujjar community, too, appears uneasy with the party. The imprint of the Muzaffarnagar riots is still visible in the politics of western UP. The broad social coalition on which the SP hopes to strengthen its fight is, on that very front, meeting challenge after challenge. Mayawati, for her part, is again raising her activity in western UP. The BSP’s principal base has been Dalit politics, and its organisational presence in the region is of long standing. If she tightens her hold among Dalit voters, one of the most important parts of the SP’s PDA will take a direct hit. That is why the SP, too, is pressing a Dalit outreach. For the moment no wide caste-social coalition is clearly visible beside the SP—none that could make it a formidable electoral force in western UP. The RLD among Jats, the BSP and Chandra Shekhar among Dalits, and the rise of newer options in Muslim politics have weakened the party’s older equation. Resentment growing inside the party and outside it is a separate difficulty. If the contest between the NDA and the BSP hardens, and if the SP cannot hold its social base, its slide into third place will not be a political remark. It will be an electoral possibility. It is first to show who, in western UP, still stands with it. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or editorial stance of Zee News.)
The 2027 battle in western UP can no longer be read only through the lens of BJP versus SP.
The largest question before the SP is no longer how to stop the BJP. If that question is not clearly answered before the polls, the slogan of PDA will not produce on the ground the force that the party’s leadership is counting on. (The writer is a research scholar at the Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, Prayagraj, and writes on social issues and contemporary affairs.
