With the Lok Sabha poll inching closer, the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh is putting up a spirited effort to wrest back its strongholds of Firozabad, Kannauj, Badaun and Azamgarh Parliamentary seats.
In the 2019 poll, except Mainpuri – another Yadav family fief – the SP lost the first three seats to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The ruling BJP snatched the Azamgarh seat from the SP in a bypoll held in 2022. The bypoll in Azamgarh was necessitated after SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, who was elected to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly as an MLA last year, resigned from the seat.
The SP has renewed its voter outreach activities amid indications that at least five members of the party’s first family, including chief Akhilesh Yadav, are likely to contest the Lok Sabha poll. “Leaders are connecting with voters by touring the parliamentary segments and preparing for the poll,” said Sunil Singh Yadav ‘Sajan’, an SP spokesperson.
The Kannauj quotient
According to him, Akshay Yadav in Firozabad, Dharmendra Yadav in Badaun, and Dimple Yadav in Mainpuri are among those touring the constituencies. “The decision to give tickets lies with the party leadership and will be taken at an appropriate time,” he added. Mr. Akshay and Mr. Dharmendra are nephews of SP founder the late Mulayam Singh Yadav, while Ms. Dimple is the wife of Mr. Akhilesh.
Recently, while replying to a query on Mr. Akhilesh’s likely candidature from Kannauj in 2024, Ms. Dimple, the Mainpuri MP, said the city has had a long relationship with socialists and recalled that Ram Manohar Lohia, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mr. Akhilesh and she herself represented the seat in the past. “The relationship will continue,” she said.
The SP president himself is touring Kannauj extensively and has hinted at joining the fray from where he contested for the first time. Mr. Akhilesh’s political career started from Kannauj when he won the seat for the first time in 2000. He has represented the seat thrice in the Lok Sabha, while Ms. Dimple won the seat in the 2012 bypoll when Mr. Akhilesh resigned after getting elected as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. She managed to retain the seat in 2014.
In the 2014 general election, too, five members of the Yadav family entered the Lok Sabha — Mulayam Singh Yadav won from Azamgarh, Ms. Dimple from Kannauj, Mr. Akshay from Firozabad, and Mr. Dharmendra from Badaun. The SP patriarch’s grandnephew Tej Pratap Singh Yadav represented Mainpuri.
In 2019, the SP contested the Lok Sabha poll in an alliance with the Mayawati-led BSP. While the BSP won 10 seats, the SP won only five.
The BJP alone won 62 seats while its allies got another two, taking their tally to 64 out of UP’s 80 seats. The SP’s tally fell to three last year after it lost the Rampur and Azamgarh bypolls to the BJP.
Azamgarh is considered a seat from where any member of the Yadav family may contest as the SP’s core base of Muslim-Yadav communities is around 50% of the total votes. In Badaun, Mainpuri, Firozabad, and Kannauj, either the Yadav community or the Muslim-Yadav combine is in formidable numbers. This is evident from the fact that between 1999 and 2019, on most occasions, the SP candidates or Yadav family members represented these seats.
The BJP wrested Kannauj, Firozabad and Badaun in 2019 polls, with Subrat Pathak, Chandra Sen Jadon and Sanghmitra Maurya, respectively, winning these seats. The BJP’s Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ defeated Mr. Dharmendra in Azamgarh bypoll by more than 8,000 votes last year.
After the death of her father-in-law in 2022, Ms. Dimple was fielded from the vacant Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency seat, which she won by defeating BJP’s Raghuraj Singh Shakya.
Internal matters
Interestingly, the SP lost Firozabad and Badaun in 2019 partly because two rebels played spoilsport. Shivpal Singh Yadav, younger brother of the late Mulayam Singh Yadav, polled 91,869 votes in Firozabad, where his nephew, Mr. Akshay, lost by roughly 38,000 votes. Similarly, SP rebel Saleem Iqbal Shervani polled 51,947 votes in Badaun, where Mr. Dharmendra lost by less than 20,000 votes.
But Mr. Shivpal and Mr. Shervani are now back in the SP. Mr. Shivpal, who is now the party’s general secretary, told mediapersons during a visit to Firozabad that he is rooting for Mr. Akshay.
“In the 2024 election, Akshay will be the SP candidate. We have to make him victorious. If I had not contested the last election from here, Akshay would have been the MP,” said Mr. Shivpal at a public gathering this week in Firozabad.
