That the BSP is not in alliance with the SP this time will have an impact.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is facing one of the toughest challenges of its political innings in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections in western Uttar Pradesh’s three seats—Saharanpur, Bijnor and Nagina—where it has fielded new faces and preferred not to bet on in its sitting MPs.
In the past, the battle for Bijnor constituency has seen stalwarts like Mayawati, Ram Vilas Paswan and Meira Kumar test their fortunes, but over the years the Samajwadi Party has strengthened its presence in the region by bagging four of the five Assembly constituencies under this parliamentary constituency. In the coming elections, voters in the first phase on 19 April will give their mandate on the popularity of Choudhary Vijender Singh, who has replaced BSP’s victorious candidate in 2019, Malook Nagar.
Nagar had beaten BJP’s Bharatendra Singh by nearly 70,000 votes. The BSP and the SP had fought in alliance in UP in 2019. This time the BJP has shared this seat with its alliance partner RLD, whose Chandan Chauhan is going to challenge BSP’s Vijender Singh and SP’s Dipak Saini. The Bijnor seat is dominated by Muslim and Jat voters and these two communities decide who would emerge as winner.
In Saharanpur, home to six lakh Muslim voters, the BSP has nominated Majid Ali in place of Fazlur Rehman, who had won the last election. Out of the five Assembly segments under the constituency, three are with the BJP and two with the SP.
Since the SP-Congress has also fielded a Muslim candidate, the Congress veteran Imran Masood, in Saharanpur parliamentary constituency, a split in the Muslim votes may take place here. On the other hand, the BJP has re-fielded its candidate Raghav Lakhanpal, who was the runners-up in 2019, losing to the BSP candidate by 22,417 votes.
The Nagina reserved constituency appears to be heading for a split in Dalit votes, with both the BSP and the Azad Samaj Party of Chandrashekhar fighting from the seat. The seat has three lakh Dalit voters, but Muslim voters also have a sizeable presence of 6 lakh. Mayawati has decided not to re-field her party’s sitting MP Girish Chandra. Instead, the BSP ticket has been given to Surendra Menwal. The SP has fielded Manoj Kumar and the BJP has given a ticket to legislator Om Kumar.
In 2019, Girish Chandra of the BSP had got 568,378 votes. Runners-up Yashwant Singh from the BJP got 401,546 votes. Overall, the first phase of voting in the 2019 parliamentary elections had seen the BSP shock rivals and corner most of the seats in western UP.
Observers, however, say Mayawati’s decision this time to not re-field her party’s sitting MPs may create a challenging situation in the election with a strong possibility of BSP ending up with a smaller tally on these eight seats in western Uttar Pradesh. That it is not in alliance with the SP will have an impact, as the SP’s vote will not shift to the BSP, thus denting its vote share.
The BJP had bagged three of these eight seats in 2019 (Muzaffarnagar, Kairana and Pilibhit), the SP two (Moradabad and Rampur) and the BSP three (Saharanpur, Nagina and Bijnor).