In the raging battle for Uttar Pradesh, one of the biggest questions on everyone's mind is when and how the Samajwadi Party and Congress will stitch up an alliance. But this week saw a major twist elsewhere, even as the answer to that question remains in limbo. Two strong personalities went ahead and stitched up an alliance between themselves. Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM and Chandrashekhar Azad's ASP, together the Samajik Parivartan Morcha (SPM), have ignited some predictable responses to their move.
Owaisi is being labelled the BJP's B-team, while the SPM is being accused of splitting the SP-Congress INDIA bloc's vote.
But before drawing any conclusions, let's take a closer look at the numbers, setting aside the ideological debate.
Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav have emerged as two main faces of the national-level opposition, but state-level seat-sharing remains an open question.
Let's look at parts of western UP, where the SP and Mayawati's BSP held sway right up until 2014, when the BJP emerged as the principal force in UP. In the 2007 state polls, Mayawati won 69 seats in the combined western UP and Rohilkhand regions. This performance enabled her to come to power on her own as a "sarvajan" government. But in 2012, the BSP was reduced to 43 seats in the same region, ceding space to Akhilesh Yadav's party.
In the 2014-2017 period, it was the BJP which made a virtual sweep in the same region at both the Lok Sabha and Assembly levels, thereby becoming the champion party of the Hindi heartland. Suffice to say, whoever dominates western UP does end up dominating the polls.
Let's examine three seats in the same region to look at how the entry of a third player like SPM can complicate things for the challengers.
In the 2022 UP Assembly polls, here's what happened in the following constituencies:
In the Moradabad Nagar segment in Rohilkhand, the BJP won by a margin of 782 votes while the AIMIM polled 2,661 votes. In Kursi, in Barabanki district, the BJP won by 520 votes while the AIMIM polled 8,541 votes. On the Nakur seat in Saharanpur in western UP, the BJP won by 315 votes while the AIMIM polled 3,593 votes.
The party behind the winner was the SP. Incidentally, the BSP, once the party to beat in these areas, finished third in all the above-mentioned seats.
In the Nagina Lok Sabha segment, where Chandrashekhar Azad won in 2024, he got a total of 51.19 per cent of the votes polled. The BSP got a measly 1.33 per cent. So, from a seat where the BSP had won the previous Lok Sabha poll by securing 56.29 per cent of the votes, the party was reduced to single digits, losing its Dalit base almost entirely to Chandrashekhar Azad.
Ironically, right next door in Bijnor, where Azad had not put up a candidate, the BSP still polled 21 per cent vote share. However, NDA ally RLD won the seat by a slender margin of 37,508 votes.
In Saharanpur and Moradabad, where neither Azad nor AIMIM contested, Muslim voters consolidated decisively behind Congress's Imran Masood (44.03 per cent) and SP's Ruchi Vira (49.67 per cent), who had moved from the BSP.
Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party won just one seat in the 2022 UP polls; the lone MLA died earlier this year. Photo: NDTV File
What do all these numbers tell us?
Both the Dalit and Muslim communities in UP are looking for better representation for themselves. Mayawati isn't the force she used to be. She has spent more time recently managing her family affairs, one day appointing Akash Anand as the national convener of BSP only to drop him the next day, followed once again by his re-appointment. While her core Jatav vote among the Dalits has stayed with her through thick and thin, the numbers shown above do show that she cannot be counting on the core community's support forever if there is a stronger candidate in the fray.
For Akhilesh Yadav's SP, the challenge is in how he deals with Owaisi. From the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when the SP gave 16 per cent tickets to Muslims, to 2019, when it came down to 10 per cent, and then to 2024, when it went below that, the trend has been one of declining representation. Only four of the 62 candidates fielded by SP were Muslim in 2024. He could be under pressure now to give greater representation to Muslims in ticket distribution.
Just like Mayawati, who has always enjoyed the support of a core Jatav vote base, Akhilesh Yadav has also counted on one-way support from Muslims. The community voted almost en masse for him in the 2022 Assembly polls. Yet, the BJP couldn't be beaten.
With Owaisi and Azad's SPM planning to field candidates across 403 seats in UP, a cut in Muslim vote for the SP and the Dalit vote for the BSP, however minimal, cannot be ruled out.
Yogi Adityanath is aiming for a third consecutive term as chief minister. Photo: NDTV File
The interesting part is that for a large state like UP with several smaller communities like Mallah, Nishad, Naayi, and Bind, it was always the BJP which had to work hard to ensure that these communities weren't going away to smaller parties. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. Established community-based parties like the SP and BSP have to be mindful of not taking their bases for granted.
According to Election Commission data, a total of 474 registered unrecognised political parties were in the fray in the 2017 UP Assembly polls. That figure could go up in 2027. So, in this game of political chess, who plays the card of community representation better is what will ultimately determine the success or failure of the latest political experiment in UP.
(The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi. He closely follows elections, travelling extensively across the country to observe, understand, and analyse its politics and policies.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.
