The campaign was announced recently by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav during a meeting with party workers at the SP headquarters as he told them to pull up their socks and boost ground-level activities ahead of polls. Yadav, while addressing the gathering, blamed the BJP government for misusing government schemes and using beneficiaries as vote bank.
The party is also strengthening its pre-poll exercises and training workers to woo voters. Party insiders said under ‘Ghar Ghar Dastak’, workers are being trained to carry out door-to-door campaigns to create awareness of the development work SP carried out during its regime.
Political analysts, however, called it a desperate move to counter BJP’s pre-poll exercise that largely aimed to woo the Other Backward Caste (OBC) and Scheduled Caste (SC) vote base, which they say will remain a bone of contention during Lok Sabha Polls.
“All the fight is for the OBC and SC vote bank. Both BJP and SP are at loggerheads and want to woo voters whether by hook or by crook. SP’s new poll mantra is nothing but an attempt to counter BJP’s pre-poll exercise to woo OBC and SC voters,” said Shashikant Pandey, head of the department of political science at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow.
Pandey said SP’s focus on the OBC and SC vote bank in the upcoming elections can be further corroborated in the party recent selection of the Uttar Pradesh state executive unit in which a majority of members belonged to the two categories.
Senior SP member Mohammed Azam Khan’s son Abdullah Azam Khan was made the party’s state secretary in the new panel, SP’s chief spokesperson Rajendra Chowdhury said. Besides, the new unit also has Irfanul Haq, CL Verma, Shyampal Bind and BS Bind as vice-president and Rajkular Mishra as treasurer.
In totality, there will be 61 secretaries, 48 members and 62 special invitee members. He added that there are 182 member state executive announcements after Yadav’s approval. However, in the recent selection of the state executive unit, several members are from OBC and SC categories, added Pandey.
Interestingly, BJP too is eyeing OBC and SC voters that constitute a solid vote bank, especially in the east UP region.
“BJP’s mass induction programme, under which it is inducting bigwigs from opposition parties, is the biggest example. Recently, it inducted around 18 big names in order to expand its vote base in politically crucial Uttar Pradesh, which sends 80 MPs to Lok Sabha. Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief Om Prakash Rajbhar’s induction in BJP-led NDA was the first. Rajbhar himself had won from Zahoorabad assembly seat in Ghazipur district and had managed to win six seats in UP assembly polls with SP,” he said.
Pandey added that soon after, former UP MLA Dara Singh Chauhan switched sides to join the BJP from SP. Within days of Rajbhar and Chauhan’s moves, BJP struck again and announced the induction of around 18 bigwigs from different political parties — 11 from SP, five from Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), one from Congress and one from Rashtriya Lok Dal. These ‘special 18’ include two ex-MPs, two former SP ministers and most importantly Shalini Yadav who had contested against Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the SP in the 2019 general elections.
The political analyst said the frequent inductions in BJP were part of the party’s game plan to increase its OBC and SC vote base in UP. “Since Rajbhar was first to switch, let’s start with him. With a sizeable chunk of population in East UP districts belonging to OBCs and SCs, the Rajbhar community often plays a deciding factor for the candidates contesting from around two dozen Lok Sabha Seats. Undoubtedly, Rajbhar’s induction will help BJP bolster its foothold among non-Yadav OBCs,” he added.
He said the list of new joinees also included six OBC leaders — Satyapal Yadav, Sunita Yadav, Sahab Singh Saini, Rajpal Saini and Sushma Patel — and three SC leaders — Anshul Verma, Jagdish Sonkar and Gulab Saroj.
SK Dwivedi, professor and former HoD of political science at the University of Lucknow, said BJP’s performance in six seats — Ambedkarnagar, Azamgarh, Ghazipur, Ghosi, Lalganj and Jaunpur — was not satisfactory in 2019. In Azamgarh, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav bagged the seat, defeating BJP’s Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ with a sizeable margin of 2,59,874 votes. In other seats, BJP candidates suffered a massive defeat from Bahujan Samaj Party candidates.
“Perhaps it’s the only reason why both the parties, SP and BJP, are leaving no stone unturned in wooing the OBC and SC voters especially when it comes to seats where the two play a deciding role,” he added.
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