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Journalism of Courage
AHEAD OF the 2024 general elections, Uttar Pradesh is witnessing a slugfest between its two main opposition parties, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). More than attacking the ruling party, the SP and BSP have been calling the other the “B-team” of the ruling BJP, evidently in the hope of attracting the state’s Muslim voters as well as “floating voters” of other communities who are upset with the BJP’s policies.
The BSP, which saw its electoral graph further shrink in the 2022 Assembly elections, winning just 1 seat, has been attacking the SP, which gave the BJP a gutsy fight. In recent days, the SP — which had mostly avoided commenting on the BSP leadership so far — has started returning fire.
During a visit to Sitapur on March 12, SP president Akhilesh Yadav accused the BSP of working in collusion with the BJP, and said BSP candidates were decided in the BJP office during the 2022 elections, to undermine the SP’s chances of winning the elections.
BSP president Mayawati set off this line of attack when, days after the 2022 UP Assembly election results were announced, she accused SP patron Mulayam Singh Yadav (who passed away in October last year) of being in cahoots with the BJP and getting his son Akhilesh blessed by the party leadership.
In tweets (in Hindi), Mayawati said, “BJP se BSP nahin balki SP sanrakshak Shree Mulayam Singh khulkar mile hain, jihnone BJP ke pichle hue shapath mein, Shri Akhilesh ko BJP se ashirwad bhi dilaya hai aur ab apne kaam ke liye ek sadasya ko BJP mein bhej diya hai. Yeh jag-jahir hai. (It is not the BSP but SP patron Mulayam Singh who is openly siding with the BJP and had got Akhilesh blessed by Yogi Adityanath during the BJP’s 2017 swearing-in ceremony, and has also sent one family member to the BJP).” The family member reference was to Mulayam’s younger daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav.
Mayawati also accused “casteist media” with its “cheap conspiracies” and “sponsored surveys” of misleading the state’s Muslim and anti-BJP Hindus by helping propagate the propaganda that the BSP was working with the BJP. “But the reality is the exact opposite, because the BSP’s fight with the BJP is political, electoral and on principles,” she said.
Later, during the Azamgarh Lok Sabha bypoll, the SP had blamed for the loss of a seat it considered its stronghold to the BJP on the BSP. The latter had fielded Shah Alam alias Guddu Jamali, who got over 2.54 lakh votes, and is believed to have dented the SP’s Muslim vote bank, helping the BJP win by just over 8,600 votes.
The SP had also seen a similar plot at work in the Rampur Lok Sabha bypoll, which it also lost. While the BSP did not field a candidate here, the SP saw it as a means to help the BJP secure the Dalit votes.
On August 24 last year, Mayawati directly took on Akhilesh over his visits to meet party MLA Ramakant Yadav in Azamgarh district jail, asking why he did not visit jailed Muslim leaders. “Is it unreasonable for opponents and the common people to ask the SP chief why he does not go to jail to meet Muslim leaders, while he accuses the state BJP government of implicating SP leaders in fake cases and lodging them in jails?” Mayawati tweeted.
In December last year, Mayawati said Muslims need to carefully think over the results of the bypolls for Mainpuri Lok Sabha and Rampur Assembly seats, so that they can be saved from being “cheated” in future elections. She referred to the low polling in Rampur as a “planned one”, and wondered whether the SP’s victory in Mainpuri and its first-ever loss in Azam Khan’s stronghold of Rampur were the result of connivance between the SP and the BJP.
At the same time, in the presidential and vice-presidential elections held last year, the BSP announced support to the NDA’s candidates.
Last month, Mayawati also attacked the SP for its repeated demands for a caste census in UP and said that the SP should have got the caste census exercise done in the past when it ruled the state. Mayawati said her party was a strong supporter of a nation-wide caste census but that the Central government should come forward for it. However, she has not made any demand from the NDA government in this regard.
In the UP Assembly last month, when the SP raised the issue of the murder of Umesh Pal – a key witness in the 2005 BSP MLA Raju Pal murder case — and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in response accused the SP of sheltering mafiosi and criminals like Atiq Ahmed, Leader of Opposition Akhilesh Yadav responded, “In my party? Which party is he a member of? Especially since you are friends with the BSP, but you are not taking their name.”
Atiq Ahmed’s wife Shaista Parveen is now with the BSP.
A BSP leader said the party’s war of words with the SP had to be seen in context of the fact that in UP, “both need to add Muslim votes and other floating votes to their traditional vote banks of Dalits and Yadavs to win elections”. “The SP’s attacks on the BSP are attempts to convince Muslim and other anti-BJP voters that they should support the party to dislodge the BJP from power. The BSP’s attacks on the SP too are with the same intention — of wooing Muslims as well as those OBCs and upper castes who want to vote for a party that stands a chance of defeating the BJP,” the BSP leader said.
SP spokesperson Abdul Hafiz Gandhi said, “In the constitutional set-up, the party that is in power is attacked and questioned, not the Opposition. But as the BSP targets the main opposition SP and not the ruling party, it raises suspicion about their true intent.”
