Samajwadi Party firms up plan to field 100 Dalits, tribals — 14 in general seats — in UP

“We are working on zeroing in on candidates from Dalit communities who can contest on general seats. While our target is to give 100 seats to the community, it will depend on suitable and strong candidates. The general seats where we are likely to give Dalit candidates tickets are those where the SP is not too strong,” said an SP insider.

The SP had fielded two Dalit candidates in general seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections – Meerut and Faizabad (Ayodhya). While Awadhesh Prasad had managed to win the all-important Faizabad seat, Sunita Verma had lost to BJP’s Arun Govil in Meerut by a narrow margin of 10,585 votes.

“The idea behind the decision is to help build a narrative that the SP is willing to give SCs a larger share than the reserved seats. We had done this in the 2024 general elections too, and it had worked for us,” said a senior SP leader.

Beyond sending a message to the Dalit community, the objective, insiders say, is also to build a larger narrative that the SP is shedding its image of being a Yadav-Muslim party.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the party had fielded five Yadav candidates – all from the SP’s first family led by Akhilesh Yadav – and four Muslim candidates of the total 62 candidates it had fielded. All nine had won, and seven Dalit candidates apart from Verma and Prasad had also made it to the Lok Sabha.

Parties in UP, including the SP and Congress, which are allies, have over the last few years gone all out to reach out to Dalits in an attempt to fill the vacuum left by the BSP.

Dalits, who have in the past been the core base of the BSP, make up 21% of UP’s population, as per the 2011 Census. But that has been changing. The Mayawati-led party won just one seat in the 2022 Assembly elections with a vote share of 12.88%, down from 19 seats and a 22.23% vote share in 2017. Even the BSP’s core base appeared to erode in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, with the BSP failing to win a single seat and its vote share falling to 9.4% from 19.43% in 2019.

Parties go all in

With this space opening up, the SP, the Congress, and even the BJP have been working to garner Dalit support in the state.

The Yogi Adityanath-led government’s recent Cabinet expansion reflected the BJP’s calibrated social and political balancing exercise, reinforcing its outreach among non-Yadav OBCs and Dalits, among other communities.

SP leaders are confident of Dalits backing the party and the INDIA bloc in UP. The party’s much-talked-about PDA plank had paid rich dividends in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls – when the alliance won 43 out of 80 seats in the state.

“Akhilesh ji has been telling Yadav and Muslim leaders that the party will stick to the 2024 formula and not give too many tickets to the communities. Later on, once the government is formed leaders from these communities will be accommodated through the Legislative Council route,” said a senior party leader from the Muslim community.

Rajya Sabha MP Ramji Lal Suman, an SP leader from the Dalit community, told The Indian Express that the party is confident of securing a sizable chunk of Dalit votes. “I don’t want to criticise the BSP, but people in UP have understood that the BSP is eventually going to help the BJP. In the current political scenario, a party can’t sit back and expect votes – something the BSP is doing. We will be getting the anti-BJP vote from the Dalit community. The Dalits have realised that the BJP’s and RSS’s inherent mindset is anti-Dalit, which is reflected in their Manuvadi agenda,” Suman said.

Not just Suman, but even Akhilesh has started criticising the BSP, something he generally avoids. At a recent public interaction, Akhilesh made an appeal for the Dalit community’s votes. “Whether they (BSP) are with the BJP directly or through the back door, I appeal to you that voting for BSP means wasting your votes,” he had said.

Akhilesh’s direct attack on the BSP is a reflection that the party will adopt an aggressive approach towards wooing the Dalits in the state.

The Congress, on the other hand, is also claiming the party’s successful “save the Constitution” campaign will once again work in the 2027 UP elections.

Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi recently unveiled a statue of Veera Pasi, a “forgotten hero” who had fought the British during the Revolt of 1857, in his constituency Raebareli, highlighting the party’s focus on Dalits. The party has been claiming that Dalits voted in favour of the INDIA bloc because of Gandhi’s appeal among Dalits due to his relentless campaign for the community.

With the SP and Congress likely to continue as allies, the possibility of Dalit votes swinging towards the INDIA bloc could be a huge factor in deciding the outcome of the 2027 Assembly elections.