LUCKNOW: Having fought the first election in absence of Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav seems to have established himself as the only challenger to the saffron juggernaut again by winning more Lok Sabha seats than the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. The win came after bagging 111 out of 403 seats in 2019 Assembly polls.
Akhilesh has emerged as a game changer with the muscle of highest number of MPs after Congress in the INDIA bloc.
Making an impressive comeback in national politics riding high on his ‘Pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak’ (PDA) plank, Akhilesh kept his campaign focused on farmer distress, unemployment, paper leaks and price rise drawing huge crowds to his rallies.
All through his campaign he made a conscious effort to not to take PM Modi or CM Yogi’s name while targeting them ensuring that the political debate did not turn personal which could have annoyed the fence sitters who may not agree with the actions of PM and CM but admire them as political personalities.
An intelligent selection of candidates also helped the SP chief’s resurgence. He fielded five Yadav candidates from his family and four Muslims on the 62 seats that his party contested to escape the charge of being inclined towards a particular caste and community.
PDA was conceived with the idea of putting Dalits and non-Yadav OBCs at par with Yadavs and Muslims to expand the party base beyond ‘M-Y’ factor. There were apprehensions of SP losing support among upper castes and unsettling its core vote bank of Yadavs and Muslims, and failing to attract Dalits and non-Yadav OBCs. But on both counts, SP ended up scoring.
After the 2019 LS poll alliance between SP and BSP, when Mayawati parted ways with 10 seats and Akhilesh was left with 5, it was evident that vote transfer between SP and its ally was a one-way street. The SP leadership felt cheated. Party strategists then shifted their focus to Dalit leaders with whom the party was in touch.
After including Dalits in his PDA pitch, Akhilesh fielded two from the community on unserved seats – Sunita Verma from Meerut and Awadesh Prasad from Ayodhya. While Awadesh was declared elected from Ayodhya, Verma failed to make it after a tough fight in Meerut.
Besides the Dalit outreach, Akhilesh also roped in some prominent backward BSP leaders like MLAs Lalji Verma and Ramachal Rajbhar. His reconstituted national executive has around 40% non-Yadav OBCs from electorally influential communities like Kurmi, Rajbhar and Nishads. Akhilesh also fielded 10 Kumris, six Shakyas and Mauryas, five Passis and eight Brahmins. He also fielded four Mallahs and Nishads, six Muslims, five Yadavs, four Kshetriyas, two from Pal, three Bhumihars, six Jatavs and Ahirwar castes, and two each from Jat and Valmiki castes.