SP-BSP pact in Uttar Pradesh

MONTHS before the Lok Sabha elections, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) have agreed ‘in principle’ to an alliance in Uttar Pradesh. The crucial development has thrown the electoral battle wide open not only in UP, but also in other states of the Hindi belt, including Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Both the SP and the BSP had been decimated in the 2017 UP Assembly elections, winning just 47 and 19 seats, respectively, even as the BJP had recorded a thumping victory with 312 seats in the 403-member House. However, the two opposition parties’ combined vote share was a sizeable 44 per cent, higher than the saffron party’s nearly 40 per cent. These numbers, coupled with anti-incumbency and the BJP’s defeat in three Lok Sabha bypolls in the state last year, give Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati considerable confidence to turn the tables in the parliamentary face-off.

The gathbandhan apparently has no place for the Congress, which is again set to be confined to the Gandhis’ pocket boroughs of Amethi and Rae Bareli. The BSP has even gone to the extent of calling the grand old party an ‘insignificant’ force in UP. Punching above its weight, the Dalit-centric party has been keeping the Congress on tenterhooks in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Despite having just two BSP MLAs in the MP Assembly, Mayawati recently managed to push the Kamal Nath government to make a decisive commitment on dropping ‘frame-up’ cases registered by the previous dispensation under the SC/ST Act.

With 80 Lok Sabha seats (the maximum for any state), the Uttar Pradesh battleground can make or mar fortunes on the national stage. In 2014, the BJP had won a whopping 71 seats, while the SP had finished a distant second and the BSP had drawn a blank. The Congress obviously needs the twosome to upstage Modi and Co. As of now, both parties are playing hard to get. Their clout is likely to grow further once the nation pronounces its mandate.