As SP gets ready to plug RLD-shaped hole in west UP, Congress may demand more seats

“Jayant ji did help us get the votes of the Jats who were against the BJP for issues like farmer protests, wrestler’s protests etc. But the Jat voter has been with the BJP for a while now and votes for the saffron party. Our party is going to lose some votes and we should try and fill that gap by promoting other Jat leaders in places where the community has influence. It is up to the central leadership of the party to identify such leaders and make them more prominent,” said an SP leader in Muzaffarnagar.

An SP leader in Amroha district claimed Jayant’s exit would not affect the party. The reason, he explained, is that Jayant anyway brought only the anti-BJP vote to the SP and that will remain unaffected. “Those who are against the BJP will continue to vote for the Opposition. Jayant ji has some influence but not so much that he would be able to sway all the anti-BJP votes back to the ruling party,” said the SP functionary.

The RLD and the SP have been allies since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Given the RLD’s performance in the last few elections, Akhilesh is not likely to worry much. The party lost all three seats it contested as part of the SP-BSP-RLD alliance in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, finishing second to the BJP in each. In Muzaffarnagar and Baghpat, the RLD gave the BJP a tough fight by securing 49.2% and 48.5% of the vote shares, respectively.

In the 2022 Assembly elections, the party could only win eight seats out of 33 it contested in alliance with the SP, winning just 2.9% of the overall vote share. It had a sizeable presence in the seats it contested though, winning 33.9% of the vote share. The RLD finished runner-up in 19 seats, losing by less than 10,000 votes in six of them.

SP national spokesperson Farazuddin Kidwai said the RLD’s exit would not affect the SP because the Jayant-led party had “compromised on its core ideology”, which is centred on farmers. “Why are so many farmers protesting during BJP rule? As we speak, the farmers are preparing for a protest in Delhi. So if Jayant ji has left the Opposition and abandoned the cause of farmers, it will impact his politics in the long run and it will have no impact on the SP,” he said.

The BJP’s decision to bring the RLD on board would help it consolidate its support among Jats, who are the RLD’s core base, and place it ahead in at least seven seats in west UP, where its prospects were considered grim as per ground surveys done by the party ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

With the Congress and the SP still working out their seat-sharing formula in UP, the former is expected to demand more seats in west UP. “The SP has so far finalised 11 seats for us, but that was because the SP leadership kept telling us that they also have to accommodate the RLD in western UP. But now with the RLD gone, we will demand more seats from the SP. They should at least give us Saharanpur and Amroha, where senior leaders Imran Masood and Danish Ali (formerly of the BSP) can contest for the Congress. There are other seats too where we should be getting the ticket as part of the alliance,” said a Congress leader.

Some SP leaders also agreed with the Congress’s demand for more seats in the region. “They do have these two Muslim leaders and Danish Ali sahab has become very big after recent developments. So, the central leadership in our party should ensure that senior Congress leaders from the Muslim community contest. It will also send a good message among Muslim voters for our party’s sake,” said an SP leader.