The Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) announcement of probable candidates on seven Lok Sabha seats in Western Uttar Pradesh hints at renewed attempts by the Dalit centric party to consolidate its Muslim support in the U.P. With five of the seven announced names hailing from the Muslim community, the party seemingly hopes to revive the old Dalit-Muslim social alliance, which is considered a winnable combination in many seats in the region.
With this move, the party also likely intends to nullify the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress gameplan of making the 2024 election a bi-polar election.
The BSP had announced that Irfan Saifi from Moradabad, Muhahid Hussain from Amroha, Anish Ahmed Khan from Pilibhit, Majid Ali from Saharanpur, Akil Ahmed Patta from Kannauj (which falls in the State’s central-western region), Chaudhary Vijendra Singh from Bijnor, and Dara Singh Prajapati from Muzaffarnagar are the party’s potential candidates in the region.
“We will take all sections together in this fight, we will work for larger unity among Dalits and Muslims and other sections of society,” Mr. Saifi said while speaking with mediapersons after his name was announced.
The candidature is likely to be made official by BSP president Mayawati in the days to come.
The candidates named by the BSP boast ground connect. Mr. Saifi, for instance, is the Nagar Palika president of Thakudwara in Moradabad district, while Majid Ali has been an influential leader in the Deoband constituency and fought Assembly elections in the past. Anish Ahmed Khan is a three-time former MLA from the Bisalpur seat in Pilibhit and contested Parliamentary elections twice in 2009 and in 2014 on a BSP ticket. The other candidates Chaudhary Vijendra Singh, a Jat and former Rashtriya Lok Dal leader is also consider to hold influence in the Lok Sabha seat of Bijnor, while Dara Singh Prajapati is the national president of the Rashtriya Prajapati Mahasabha, a social, caste centric organisation.
The announcements clearly shows that the BSP is banking on its old Muslim-Dalit alliance in the Western U.P. region, which gave dividends in the past. “In many of these seats Muslims constitute more than 30% electorate and all the constituencies have sizeable Dalit electorate, hence the party thinks it may repeat the past results,” Shashikant Pandey, a political scientist teaching at Lucknow University, said. In 2009, of the seven seats that BSP won in the in Western U.P. region, the Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, and Sambhal seats saw the BSP’s Muslim candidates emerge victorious, indicating a strong trend for the party in this regard.
But it is believed the task will be tough to replicate the past success given U.P. moving into bi-polar polity and the BSP declining support base. “The way a section of Dalit moved away from the BSP in past decade, it will be difficult to repeat the success as Muslim community will check the winnability of the candidate before voting. But it is also true that the BSP is likely to cut a section of SP-Congress core support base (Muslim),” added Mr. Pandey.
The BSP, once a formidable player in U.P. political landscape, witnessed a decay in support base evident from the past two Assembly and Parliamentary elections in U.P. The party which formed government in the state on its own in 2007 Assembly election by winning 206 out of 403 seats, presently in 2024 is having a lone MLA and lost almost 60 percent of its voter support. In 2007, it polled 30.43 percent votes, while in 2022 Vidhan Sabha it got only 12.88 percent of polled votes.
