BJP has accepted that small parties can make or break its dream.
If the road to Lok Sabha goes through Uttar Pradesh, then the journey from Lucknow to Delhi cannot be completed by any national political party without taking along smaller partners from the state with 80 parliamentary seats. Even for a political force like the Bharatiya Janata Party, winning Uttar Pradesh without any alliance in parliamentary elections is impossible. This is the reason why the NDA line-up in the state with 24 crore population has four small parties complementing the BJP for the big battle beginning next month.
As the BJP aims for a third straight term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the party has accepted the reality that even small parties can make or break its dream. This, in fact, is reflected in the party’s decision to tie up with Apna Dal (S), Rashtriya Lok Dal, Nishad Party and Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party.
According to political analyst Gopal Prasad, the large parties in UP—BJP (vote share 49.98%), SP (18.11%) and BSP (19.43%)—get votes in lakhs, but on some seats they end up losing by 5,000-25,000 votes. This is where smaller parties cause the maximum damage. And this is the reason the big players want to take along these caste-based parties.
Apna Dal (S) holds sway over the Kurmi community voters, who account for 7.46% of the state’s population. The SBSP has support among the Rajbhar community whose population is 2.44%. The Nishad Party attracts voters from communities like Nishad, Malha, Dhivar, and Kevat. The RLD is largely a Jat outfit, with this community accounting for 3.6% of the state’s population. The Yadav community in the state accounts for 19.40% of the population.
The BJP is looking to woo a section of the Yadav community by using the face of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, who would be addressing several rallies in UP.
At present, the Samajwadi Party is the dominant force in Yadav land and none of its rivals has managed to bite into the community’s support base for the Akhilesh Yadav-led party.
While the BJP has already done its calculations on the complicated chessboard of UP, the I.N.D.I.A bloc has not been able to add many smaller satraps to its team. While Akhilesh has been leading the bloc in the state, the Congress has agreed to play the role of a junior partner.
Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) has joined hands with the SP. This faction of the Apna Dal, is led by the wife of the late Sone Lal Patel, Krishna and her younger daughter Pallavi. Pallavi is a legislator in the state on SP ticket from Sirathu.
The Azad Samaj Party has also shown willingness to align with the SP. Though the AAP, which is a national level partner in the I.N.D.I.A bloc, has stayed out of the anti-BJP alliance in UP. Mayawati, too, has parted ways with the SP with which it had jointly contested the last elections and reaped a rich dividend of 10 seats.
With the changing dynamics of caste politics in UP, the major parties are hoping to get the right team in place to win a majority of the 80 seats in the state. In 2019, the BJP-led NDA won 64 seats, the BSP-SP-RLD alliance won 15 and the Congress had to contend with just one seat.