© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
NOT MANY INDIA alliances have worked out as per plan, but at least one surprise deal appears to have been ironed out. As per this, the Samajwadi Party has set aside a seat for the Trinamool Congress out of its share in Uttar Pradesh, and in return, got a seat for itself from the Congress in Madhya Pradesh. Neither the TMC nor the SP have much of a presence in either of the states where they are now contesting.
While the TMC has never contested an election in UP, the SP has never registered a win in its attempts in Madhya Pradesh, including in the 2023 Assembly polls. The SP, however, has enjoyed warm relations with the TMC.
The constituency that the TMC will fight from in Uttar Pradesh is Bhadohi, from where it has announced former Congress MLA Lalitesh Pati Tripathi, the son of senior UP Congress leader Rajesh Pati Tripathi, as its candidate. Rajesh Pati, himself an ex-MLA, is the grandson of former UP CM Kamalapati Tripathi.
Lalitesh Pati Tripathi, who was elected from the Marihan Assembly seat on a Congress ticket in 2012, reportedly wanted to contest from neighbouring Mirzapur, from where he contested and lost in 2019 as a Congress candidate, getting just 8.25% votes. Shortly after, he defected to the TMC in 2021.
“But, considering the social equations, Akhilesh Yadavji found it better to field an upper caste from Bhadohi, and leave Mirzapur for an OBC candidate. Bhadohi Lok Sabha constituency appears to be a safe seat of the SP as, out of the five Assembly segments under it, the party won three in the 2022 Assembly elections,” said Tripathi.
In 2019, the BJP’s Ramesh Chand had defeated the BSP’s Rangnath Mishra from the seat by more than 40,000 votes. The BSP and SP were in alliance at the time. The caste logic had at the time fallen before the BJP’s popularity, with Chand being an OBC and Mishra a Brahmin. The Congress got only 2.46% of the votes.
Bhadohi’s significant upper caste population is almost matched by its Muslim, and OBC Yadav and Bind numbers, which on paper make it an easy seat for the SP.
An SP leader said: “In UP, the TMC has no state organisation, nor state president or district leaders. While Tripathi will fight on the TMC symbol, people who vote for him will do so because of his personal connections in the area, as well as the SP’s existing vote base.”
Tripathi claimed that TMC chief Mamata Banerjee was also a popular figure in the area. “She came to campaign in the 2022 Assembly elections for the SP,” he said, adding that the SP agreed back then to give the TMC the ticket from Bhadohi.
As part of the INDIA seat-sharing arrangement, the Congress will contest 17 Lok Sabha seats in UP. The Congress’s Lok Sabha in-charge of Bhadohi, Anand Rai, said the party’s full support was behind Tripathi. “We are holding poll meetings to ensure that he wins. The Congress will deploy its workers on every booth on polling day.”
As part of the bargain, the SP will contest from Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh, an OBC-dominated seat. However, the contest is expected to be very tough for the INDIA bloc as the BJP candidate is sitting MP and BJP Madhya Pradesh president V D Sharma. The SP had contested from Khajuraho in 2019 as well, when it was not in alliance with the Congress, and got 3.18% of the votes. Sharma had defeated the Congress’s Maharani Kavita Singh Natiraja then by 4.92 lakh votes.
In the recent Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress lost all the eight Assembly segments under the Khajuraho Lok Sabha constituency to the BJP.
The SP is currently in the hunt for a candidate for the Khajuraho seat. The party’s Madhya Pradesh working president, Ramayan Singh Patel, said, “We had demanded other seats like Tikamgarh and Satna, but only got Khajuraho.”
Khajuraho has a substantial OBC population — including roughly 3 lakh Patels (Kurmis), 1.8 lakh Lodhs and 1.7 lakh Yadavs — apart from about 2 lakh Muslims and Brahmins each, and 1 lakh Thakurs. If the OBC plus Muslim vote comes to the SP, the party can hope to put up a challenge in the seat.
An SP leader from Uttar Pradesh said: “After the BJP picked Mohan Yadav as Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, ostensibly to counter the influence of the Opposition’s two prominent Yadav leaders — Akhilesh Yadav (SP) and Tejashwi Yadav (RJD) — the Congress agreed to give a seat to the SP in order to woo Yadavs in the state. Hence, in the spirit of the alliance, Akhilesh Yadav will campaign across Madhya Pradesh.”
Before the 2023 Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh too, the Congress and SP had tried to reach an alliance, but failed. The Congress was reduced to 66 seats out of 230, after having emerged as the largest party in the 2018 Assembly polls when it won 114 seats, while the SP had contested in 71 seats and lost deposits in all, barring one.
