Will Uttar Pradesh 2022 be a straight contest between BJP and Samajwadi Party?

The staggering victory margin of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections makes it difficult to imagine whether the results would have been any different had the opposition parties played it another way. The BJP, after all, won more than three-fourths of the 403 seats in the assembly.

Yet, a constituency-level analysis shows that a two-way split of anti-BJP votes made the outcome even more lopsided. Consider this: there are 140 constituencies in the state where Muslims account for over 20% of the population. These seats were at the heart of the Samajwadi Party’s success in 2012 when it came to power dislodging the Bahujan Samaj Party – they had won more than half of them. In 2017, the BJP and its allies won a whopping 111 of them, thanks to a very palpable division of Muslim votes between the two regional parties, in addition to a Hindu consolidation.

The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party came together for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in a seeming effort to remedy the situation, but the alliance tanked spectacularly.Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity apart, analysts blamed the defeat on the coalition’s failure to rise above its inherent social contradictions.

The decline of the BSP

Ahead of the 2022 Assembly elections in the state, the two parties have decided to go solo again. Many observers of Uttar Pradesh politics, though, believe that the contest this time may not quite be multi-cornered. At the heart of this theory is the decline of the Bahujan Samaj Party’s influence over the last couple of years as borne out by a steady exodus from the unit.

“Whatever fight will be given to the BJP will be by the SP,” said Mirza Asmer Beg, a political scientist at the Aligarh Muslim University. “The BSP is disintegrating everyday and the Congress barely has any presence.”

For two decades, the Congress has not managed to win more than 30 seats in the state. In the last four Assembly elections in the state, the party has only once managed to snare more than 10% of the total votes cast.

The Bahujan Samaj Party’s slide, too, is difficult to miss. From having won a clean majority by itself in 2007, its tally dropped to a meagre 19 seats in the 2017 Assembly elections. In that period, its vote share dropped by nearly ten percentage points.

This has coincided with several key leaders either exiting the party or being forced out. Eleven of its 19 legislators are no longer part of the party. Not just office bearers, its cadre base too appears to be in a disarray.

Sushil Gautam, a Dalit activist based in Meerut, said the Bahujan Samaj Party ran the risk of even losing a section of its core Jatav Dalit voters. “There is some anger against Mayawati among Dalit youth,” said Gautam who teaches history at Meerut University. “So many of them who want the BJP to go may strategically back the SP this time.”

The party for anti-BJP forces to rally around

Besides, many of those who have left the Bahujan Samaj Party have joined the Samajwadi Party of late. Among others, former Rajya Sabha MP and national general secretary of the party Veer Singh and former Uttar Pradesh chief of the party, RS Kushwaha. Expelled five-time MLA from Katehri in Ambedkarnagar, Lalji Verma, and Akbarpur MLA Ram Achal Rajbhar are also expected to join the Samajwadi Party soon.

According to some observers, this indicated that Samajwadi Party was being seen as the primary challenger to the BJP. “As a result, smaller parties seem to be allying with it,” said Shashikant Pandey who teaches political science at Lucknow’s Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University.

To be sure, the Samajwadi Party has managed to strike some deals with regional parties. Most recently, the party joined hands with the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party. Not only does the party have substantial influence in eastern Uttar Pradesh, it leads a coalition of many other caste-centric parties. These parties represent non-dominant backward caste groups such as Rajbhar, Bind, Pal, Prajapati, Chauhan, and others. Post poll-survey data shows these OBC communities voted in large numbers for the BJP in recent elections. Since 2014, over 50% of their votes – much more in some cases – have gone to the saffron party.

Additionally, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, which has considerable influence in western Uttar Pradesh, is also likely to tie up with the Samajwadi Party. Since 2014, the Rashtriya Lok Dal’s fortunes were on the wane with their core voter base, the Jats, backing the BJP. But observers say the community’s resentment over the Modi government’s contentious farm laws may have chipped away Jat support for the BJP The Rashtriya Lok Dal is likely to be the beneficiary since it helped mobilise support for the movement against the farm laws, endearing itself to Jat farmers, who are at the forefront of the protests in Uttar Pradesh

The western part of Uttar Pradesh is also home to a substantial Muslim community and it was here that the division of anti-BJP votes between the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party was the most pronounced in 2017. But Pandey speculated that may not happen this time. “Remember Yogi was not there in 2017,” he said referring to chief minister Adityanath who at the time of the 2017 campaign had not been projected by the BJP as its chief ministerial candidate. “He is a polarising figure. He may help consolidate the Hindu votes but given how how things have been under him, it would probably also mean that the Muslim votes would not get divided like before as people would vote SP that is best poised to challenge BJP.”

The third wheel(s)

But some say that the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress would have a bearing on the elections, notwithstanding their declining clout. “The two parties combined are likely to corner around one-quarter of the total votes,” said Sanjay Kumar, director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. “So that will give an advantage to the BJP – so I would call it a bipolar contest in a multipolar election.”

Still, others hold a more cynical view of the Samajwadi Party’s status as the BJP’s contender. Social scientist AK Verma seemed to suggest that it was just one of the many parties in the fray trying to catch up with the BJP that was far ahead. “It cannot be given any credit for having monopolised the position of the main challenger – it is just the second party by default,” said Verma, director of the Centre for Study of Society and Politics in Kanpur. “This default can change anytime because they haven’t really done anything to deserve that spot.”