With the Lok Sabha elections less than a year away, smaller parties in Uttar Pradesh have begun to project their strengths in their attempts to bargain with the bigger players for better seat-sharing arrangements and alliances in the state. These parties, such as the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), Mahan Dal and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), derive support from particular castes and are active in specific regions, which could help their bigger allies in strengthening their core vote bases while reaching out to other groups. In May, the BJP dropped hints that it was entering into a fresh alliance with the SBSP, which claims to have support of various non-Yadav OBCs and Dalits in eastern UP, saying the Omprakash Rajbhar-led outfit could help the saffron party in least 12 Lok Sabha seats. Subsequently, the SBSP claimed that it conducted a survey that indicated it could be influential in about 32 Lok Sabha seats. The two had contested the 2017 Assembly elections together — the SBSP won four seats then — but ended their alliance the same year. Recently, senior BJP leaders, including Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, and the leaders of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and RLD showed up at the wedding reception of Rajbhar’s son Arun in Varanasi. Their presence underlined the point that the SBSP was keeping its options open to multiple conversations for its poll alliance. In another recent development, the Mahan Dal, which had contested the 2022 Assembly polls in alliance with the SP, announced unconditional support to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). It has also started its campaign in the Farrukhabad, Kasganj, Shahjahanpur, and Badaun areas, plastering walls with posters that say: “Mahan Dal ne thana hai BSP ko jitana hai (Mahan Dal is determined to make BSP win).” “(SP president) Akhilesh Yadav ignored me in the alliance. I walked out of the alliance after the Assembly elections. As I am committed to defeat the BJP, our party has decided to support BSP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. My vote bank of Shakya, Saini, Kushwaha and Maurya (communities) had been supporting BSP till 2007. Mahan Dal will soon hold meetings in Assembly segments in BSP’s support,” Mahan Dal chief Keshav Dev Maurya said. He, however, claimed that he has so far not spoken to any BSP leader. The Mayawati-led party has a key base among Dalits, but would also need the support of OBCs and Muslims to revive its fortunes in 2024. The Congress had joined hands with the Mahan Dal in the 2009 and 2014 Lok Sabha polls in a bid to reach out to the OBC and Muslim voters. However, the Mahan Dal failed to win any seat in both these polls. It announced an alliance with the Congress in the 2019 elections too but later extended support to the BJP. The RLD, on the other hand, has a base among the Jat voters in western UP and is a prominent ally of the SP. It won eight seats in the 2022 Assembly polls, securing a 2.85 per cent vote share. In the recent urban local body polls, the party won seven seats each in the Nagar Palika and Nagar Panchayats. The SP has so far not indicated any cracks in the alliance. RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary has, however, gone into poll mode and is conducting a Samrasta Abhiyan programme with a focus on social harmony and social engineering of the “Dalit-Muslim-Jat amalgamation” of votes. The party plans to hold such public meetings in 1,500 villages in western UP before the polls. Other smaller parties too are key to the politics of alliances in UP. The Janwadi Socialist Party and Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) were both part of an alliance the SP had forged in 2022. The former draws strength from the Bind and Kashyap communities that have sizeable numbers in over a dozen districts of eastern UP. The latter is a splinter group of the Apna Dal founded by Kurmi leader Sonelal Patel. Both parties failed to win any seats in the 2022 UP polls. Patel’s daughter Pallavi Patel contested that year’s election on an SP ticket and won in Surathu, defeating Keshav Prasad Maurya with a margin of 7,000 votes. Her younger sister Anupriya Patel is the president of the Apna Dal (Sonelal), which is an ally of the BJP both in UP and at the Centre. In the 2022 polls, the Apna Dal (S) fielded candidates in 17 seats and won 15 of them. The party is now the third largest party in the state Assembly after the BJP and the SP. Another BJP ally Ninshad party has six MLAs. Its president Sanjay Kumar Nishad is also a Cabinet minister in the Yogi Adityanath government. To accommodate both the Apna Dal (S) and Nishad Party, the BJP had denied tickets to its sitting MLAs on 14 seats in 2022. Sources in the BJP indicated that Nishad Party will soon start talks with the BJP about seat-sharing in UP for the 2024 general elections. Among the smaller parties is also the All India Majlis-e-ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). The Asaduddin Owaisi-led party based out of Hyderabad had lost all 95 Assembly seats it contested in the 2022 UP polls. However, it managed to get 4.5 lakh votes and caused a dent in the larger SP alliance in many seats. In the recent urban local body elections, the AIMIM made its presence felt by winning three seats of chairperson in Nagar Palika Parishad and two in the Nagar Panchayat. The party has also won 19 municipal corporator seats. The AIMIM has not spelt out its plan for the 2024 elections so far.
