Five years after they went their separate ways, the BJP and the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) are back together as allies. The party led by O P Rajbhar returned to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) fold on Sunday, illustrating that the ruling party’s strategy of joining hands with smaller parties with specific caste and geographical bases in specific regions of Uttar Pradesh is now up and running. At present, the BJP has an alliance with the Apna Dal (Sonelal), which is part of the NDA at the Centre too, and the Nishad Party. The SBSP, which broke ties with the NDA ahead of the 2019 general elections, is crucial to the BJP as an internal survey report has indicated that the Rajbhar-led party can give the ruling party the edge in at least 12 Lok Sabha seats in east UP (and 125 Assembly constituencies). This will help the ruling party consolidate its position in the region. In 2019, the BJP won 17 of 26 Lok Sabha seats in east UP while two went to the Apna Dal (S). The BSP won six constituencies and the SP bagged Azamgarh, a seat it lost to the BJP in a bypoll last year. The SBSP claims to represent more than 60 most backward and Dalit groups that account for more than 20% of the population in east UP. The Rajbhar community itself comprises only 3% of UP’s population. “The SBSP has developed a good vote base among OBCs (Other Backward Classes) and Dalits in eastern UP. If the SBSP comes along with BJP, we can be in a strong position in at least 12 Lok Sabha seats in eastern UP, including those seats where the SP-BSP alliance defeated the BJP in 2019,” said a ruling party leader. Announcing the SBSP’s return to the NDA a day after he met Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Rajbhar said in Lucknow that he would participate in the NDA meeting in New Delhi on July 18. Shah also tweeted a photograph of his meeting with the SBSP chief. “Met Om Prakash Rajbhar in Delhi and he has decided to join Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA. I welcome him to the NDA family. The arrival of Rajbhar ji will strengthen the NDA in Uttar Pradesh and the efforts being made by NDA under the leadership of Modi ji for the welfare of the poor and deprived will be strengthened,” he wrote. Rajbhar said Shah had called him for a meeting in New Delhi on July 14 and the meeting with the Home Minister, also attended by the SBSP’s chief son and party’s principal general secretary Arvind, lasted an hour. “In a meeting, we discussed the fight for the upliftment of the poor, deprived, Dalit, and OBCs. We then decided to announce the alliance,” Rajbhar said, thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shah, BJP national president J P Nadda, and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for including his party in the NDA. Rajbhar said his party would help the BJP with achieving its goal of winning all 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The SBSP chief said he had also received an invitation from Nadda for the coming NDA meeting. “I will be there on July 18. Rest of the issues will be discussed there,” he added. Asked about the Opposition meeting in Bengaluru on July 17-18, Rajbhar said, “The Opposition should learn. On one side, the BJP is forming the government by taking along leaders of different castes. On the other side, they (the Opposition) want to contest alone. They are not agreeing on coming together. Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party president) thinks that he is the tallest leader and Mayawati (BSP president) thinks that she is the tallest leader. Both remain in confusion while Narendra Modi has emerged as the tallest one.” Targeting Akhilesh, a former ally, Rajbhar said the SP had tied up with the BSP, the Congress, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), and the SBSP but could not remain allies with any of them. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP scraped through in seats such as Machhlishahar and Ballia because the SBSP was not in alliance with the SP and the BSP. While the BJP edged out the BSP by 181 votes in Machhlishahar by 181 votes, it would have lost had the SBSP’s 11,223 votes gone to the Opposition alliance. Similarly, in Ballia, the SBSP polled 35,900 votes to come third. This was more than the margin of 15,519 votes between the BJP, which won, and runner-up SP. The SBSP allied with the SP-RLD alliance in last year’s Assembly polls, contesting 19 seats and winning six of them. Its vote share was 1.36%, up from 0.7% five years earlier. But the failure to win power caused fissures in the alliance and Rajbhar stepped up his criticism of Akhilesh. During the presidential elections last year, SBSP MLAs cross-voted for Droupadi Murmu, the NDA’s nominee, and subsequently Rajbhar broke ties with the Opposition alliance. Rajbhar then led a month-long “Savdhan Rath Yatra” through UP and Bihar, targeting the SP, BSP, Janata Dal (United), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and Congress. All these parties, except the BSP, are now trying to forge a common platform to unseat the BJP in 2024. For the last few months, the SBSP chief had been dropping hints of a possible return to the BJP. In February, Rajbhar said dominant OBC groups such as Mauryas, Patels, Lodhs, Koeris, and Nishad, and upper castes such as Rajputs and Brahmins were with the BJP and would not support the SP in elections in the future. The SBSP voted for the BJP’s nominees in elections for two Legislative Council seats in May, helping both win. Before quitting the NDA in 2019, Rajbhar, then a minister in the Adityanath government, had cited differences over “OBC issues” as the reason. In the 2022 Assembly polls, the BJP received the support of smaller parties of backward castes, including the Bharatiya Manav Samaj Party, Mushar Andolan Manch (Garib Party), Soshit Samaj Party, Manavhit Party, Bharatiya Suheldev Janata Party, Prithviraj Janshakti Party and Bharatiya Samata Samaj Party. These parties have influence in various districts of eastern and western UP and helped the BJP retain power comfortably. The BJP is now looking to replicate the success of this strategy in the general elections in UP.
