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Ties between allies Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) appear to have reached breaking point, with SBSP chief Om Prakash Rajbhar Friday attending a dinner hosted by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for NDA presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu. The SBSP has now set a deadline to the SP to reach out to it by July 12, before the presidential polls are held.
The ties between the two parties, which formed an alliance before the Assembly elections, have been on the edge since the polls ended – with meetings between top leaders of both sides failing to resolve the issues.
With Rajbhar a BJP ally in the past, the doors to the NDA are not closed to him. Any such move by the SBSP ahead of the urban local body elections due later this year, apart from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, will hurt the SP’s efforts to reach out to non-Yadav OBCs.
The SP has another ally, Apna Dal (Kamerawadi), with a support base among OBCs. But the latter is in a fight with its own original wing, the Apna Dal (S), and could not win a single seat in the recent state polls.
The tension between the SP and SBSP first took a turn for the worse during the Rajya Sabha polls, when the SP backed RLD president Jayant Chaudhary as their joint candidate. The SBSP was not amused. “The RLD contested 33 seats in the Assembly elections and won eight. On the other hand, the SBSP won six of the 19 seats it contested. The SBSP’s success rate was better. But, the SP preferred to make Chaudhary the alliance nominee instead of an SBSP leader,” says Arun Rajbhar, the SBSP chief spokesperson.
Matters finally came to a head in the recent bypolls, in which the SP lost two of its strongholds even as a curiously disinterested Akhilesh kept away. Rajbhar had questioned this, and sources said, there have been no talks between the two parties since the BJP won both Rampur and Azamgarh.
Rajbhar and his party leaders and MLAs had campaigned for the SP nominee in Azamgarh, Dharmendra Yadav, a nephew of Akhilesh. “We followed the alliance dharma and campaigned for Dharmendra Yadav. Despite that, Akhilesh Yadav did not bother to contact us,” says Arun.
Rajbhar went public with the “suggestion” that Akhilesh should come out of AC rooms and hit the streets. The SP chief replied with the retort that “the SP does not require anyone’s advice”.
On July 7, SBSP MLAs were missing from the meeting the SP held in Lucknow for the Opposition’s joint candidate for the presidential elections, Yashwant Sinha. Jayant Chaudhary was present. As per an SBSP leader, the party was deliberately kept away. “On July 6, we received a formal communication from the SP office about the meeting. But a few hours later we were informed that the meeting had been cancelled. Later, the meeting was held the next day but SBSP MLAs were not invited,” the leader said.
On Rajbhar’s presence at Adityanath’s dinner for Murmu, Arun said the SBSP chief went as the CM office sent a message that she wanted to meet him. “But the party president made no commitment about the votes of SBSP MLAs in the presidential elections,” Arun asserts.
He adds that, for its part, the SBSP wants to retain the alliance with the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in mind. “But the call has to be taken by the SP leadership. We will wait till July 12. If the SP leadership does not speak to us, we will be free to take a decision about our vote in the presidential elections, and further about the future of the alliance,” Arun said.
The SBSP had been a BJP ally in the 2017 Assembly elections. Rajbhar was made a minister in the previous Adityanath government, but had a fractious relationship with the CM and often attacked him, before finally parting ways ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. He had then tied up with the SP ahead of the 2022 Assembly elections.
The SBSP’s support base largely comprises backward castes, which account for more than 20% of the population in eastern Uttar Pradesh. The Rajbhar community constitutes 3% of the state population.
