Why the Samajwadi Party lost in its Rampur-Azamgarh bastions
In a major setback to the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP), the BJP wrested the Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats from the party. Party candidates Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ (Azamgarh) and Ghanshayam Singh Lodhi (Rampur) defeated SP nominees Dharmendra Yadav and Asim Raja respectively by big margins of 8,679 and 42,192 votes. The victory is telling as both Azamgarh and Rampur were considered entrenched SP bastions. For the ruling BJP too, a win in the parliamentary seats was crucial as they had been vacated by Akhilesh himself and senior SP leader Azam Khan.
There are a number of theories doing the rounds about the loss, chief among them being Akhilesh’s absence during campaigning. Strangely, the SP chief did not address a single public meeting in both constituencies, which became a huge talking point among voters and party workers. There is also no clarity on why he stayed away in such a crucial byelection. On condition of anonymity, an SP senior leader said, ”Akhileshji was confident that the party would win both seats even if he did not campaignindeed, our surveys had shown that we were winning easily.” It’s apparent now that the voters did not share the same confidence.
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The second reason emerging is that the candidates were finalised at the last moment, and that cadre sympathies were not taken into account. A source in the SP says that the Azamgarh local unit wanted Dimple Yadav, former MP and wife of Akhilesh to contest but the SP chief settled on his cousin Dharmendra Yadav at the last moment (a day before nominations closed). Earlier, Akhilesh was leaning towards giving the ticket to Bamcef (All India Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation) co-founder Balihari Babu’s son Sushil Anand but at the last moment it went to Dharmendra. Matters took a similar turn in Rampur where it was expected that someone from Azam Khan’s family would contest–at the last moment, Azam’s close aide Asim Raja got the ticket.
The SP has cause for serious worry as it now looks like its core M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) votebank also abandoned it in the bypoll. Both Rampur and Azamgarh have huge populations of Muslims and Yadavs and voting patterns seem to suggest this.
Yet another reason for the SP’s loss in Azamgarh was the strong performance of the BSP candidate, two-time MLA Shah Alam a.k.a. Guddu Jamali, who polled 266,106 votes. Dharmendra Yadav also blamed the BSP for his loss, saying the party acted as a “B team of the BJP” in the bypolls.
Meanwhile, the BJP camp is ecstatic after the victory. Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath said, ”The bypoll results are a harbinger for the 2024 general election. This historic victory is the result of the welfare policies of the ‘double engine BJP government’ under the leadership of the respected prime minister. We dedicate this victory to all our hardworking party workers.”
Shilp Shikha Singh, a UP-based political analyst and assistant professor at the Giri Institute of Development Studies, Lucknow, agrees on the last count–the BJP organisation has played a major role in this victory. She also added that Yogi’s “moderate Hindutva” is slowly creating its own constituency, which is having an impact all its own.
