Uttar Pradesh election 2017: How the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance helped the BJP

When Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi stitched up an alliance in Uttar Pradesh on the eve of the assembly elections, the two leaders were convinced that this partnership would pose a formidable challenge to the Bharatiya Janata Party and succeed in halting the saffron outfit’s onward march in the country’s most populous state.

This optimism in the two parties was based on two factors: Akhikesh Yadav’s popularity after he emerged victorious from a bitter family battle and that the tie-up will benefit from a consolidation of the minority vote which was showing signs of moving towards the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party.

Old guard reservations

The alliance was sealed despite strong reservations in both parties. There was a section in the Congress which felt that the party will forgo an opportunity to rebuild its organisation by agreeing to be a junior partner in the politically-crucial state of Uttar Pradesh where it has been out of power for 28 years. The Samajwadi Party also had its share of sceptics about this alliance as its cadres have been locked in a bitter battle with the Congress since the party’s inception.

As it happens, the sceptics in the Samajwadi Party and the Congress were proved right as the Bharatiya Janata Party won a landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh while the Akhilesh Yadav- Rahul Gandhi duo suffered a crushing blow. The results showed that this partnership failed to click on the ground despite the high-decibel campaigns devised by the poll strategists hired by the two parties. While Akhilesh Yadav’s image make-over failed to endear him to the electorate, the Congress added no value to the alliance as the party has virtually no support base in Uttar Pradesh.

Unintended consequences

Despite his projection as a youth icon and a concerted effort to distance himself from the lathi-wielding Yadav musclemen who have been the backbone of the Samajwadi Party, the outgoing chief minister was unable to beat back the anti-incumbency against his government.

People cutting across caste lines in Uttar Pradesh lavished praise on Akhilesh Yadav who, they said, had been doing good work. But they were also quick to point out that the same could not be said about the party’s cadres who, they repeatedly said, had let loose a reign of terror in the past five years that the Samajwadi Party has been in power. The general refrain was, “There is a marked deterioration in the law and order situation each time the Samajwadi Party forms a government. Emboldened Yadavs start indulging in goondagardi and grab our property, even our wives and daughters are not safe.”

If the strong anti-Yadav sentiment, especially among the non-Yadav backward castes, proved to be Akhilesh Yadav’s undoing, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign that the Samajwadi Party favoured the minorities and discriminated against the majority community also resonated with the electorate, leading to an unprecedented Hindu consolidation.

The Samajwadi Party’s tie-up with the Congress made matters worse as it was seen as yet another attempt at minority appeasement since the word was out that the two parties had come together primarily to woo the Muslims. This perception was further strengthened as the month-long, seven-phase election gathered momentum. It now appears that large sections of the Yadav community, the Samajwadi Party’s core support base, also voted for the BJP.

An unnatural alliance

The internal feud in the Yadav clan also cast its shadow over this election. Although Akhilesh Yadav succeeded in emerging as the true inheritor of his father’s political legacy, he was unable to win the confidence of his father, Samajwadi party founder Mulayum Singh Yadav, and his uncle Shivpal Yadav who felt aggrieved at being summarily marginalised by the younger Yadav. These divisions came to the fore as Mulayum Singh Yadav did not campaign in this election and Shivpal Yadav, known to be the party’s chief organiser, fielded rebel candidates against the Samajwadi Party’s official candidates in a clear attempt to queer the pitch for his nephew.

Akhilesh Yadav had hoped that he would be able to overcome all the negatives against his government by tying up with the Congress. The alliance, it was believed, would not only stop the fragmentation of the Muslim vote but it would also help garner the support of the Brahmins who have been partial to the Congress in the past.

But both Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi failed to understand that their parties are ideologically and socially incompatible. While the Samajwadi Party has been weaned on anti-Congressism, it is also a historical fact that the Brahmins have always had a fractious relationship with the Yadavs. “This was an unnatural alliance,” Bhupendra Dube, a resident of Varanasi, told Scroll.in during the campaign.

For instance, there were signs that the Brahmins were looking favourably at the Congress after it projected Sheila Dikshit as its chief ministerial candidate in the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh elections. However, members of the Brahmin community, who were willing to give the Congress another chance, shifted allegiance to the BJP after the party tied up the Samajwadi Party. It was best explained by Satyadev Mishra, a resident of Mirzapur: “I was going to vote for the Congress but I changed mind after Rahul Gandhi sealed a deal with Akhilesh Yadav. It appeared that they had ganged up to hound one man...Modi.”

Left too late?

The partnership was also not helped by the fact that the alliance was sealed barely a few days before the elections. This last-minute tie-up especially led to a lot of confusion among the Muslims who had started gravitating towards the Bahujan Samaj Party well before the polls were announced. Leading figures from the Muslim community in Varanasi told Scroll.in that they had been canvassing support for Mayawati for the past several months as they believed that a Dalit-Muslim combination was a winning formula and would certainly defeat the BJP. Thrown off-balance by the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance, they had to redraw their strategy and convince the minority community to support this partnership instead of the BSP.

In fact there is a view among the Muslims, endorsed by a section in the Congress, that instead of keeping the BJP at bay, the tie-up with the Samajwadi Party had actually helped the saffron outfit to storm to power in Uttar Pradesh. The BSP was emerging as a direct beneficiary of the Samajwadi Party’s five-year misrule but the alliance ended up firming up the perception that the tie-up was aimed at wooing the minorities which, in turn, led to a Hindu consolidation in favour of the BJP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s undiminished popularity and deft social engineering were the other factors which worked to the BJP’s advantage.