The allies of the BJP performed better than the allies of Samajwadi Party (SP) in the state Assembly elections, the results of which were announced on Thursday. In total, SP’s four allies contested on their respective symbols in 57 seats but could win only 14 seats, with a success percentage of 24.56 per cent. 🗞️ Subscribe Now: Get Express Premium to access the best Election reporting and analysis 🗞️ On the other hand, two allies of the BJP contested on 27 seats and won 18 of them: 66.66 per cent of the number of seats contested. Among SP’s allies, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) contested on the maximum number of seats – 33 – and won eight. The party’s vote share in the state was 2.85 per cent. In 2017, the RLD contested separately after talks regarding an alliance with the SP failed. The party had fielded candidates on 277 seats but won only one seat and its vote share was only 1.78 per cent. In comparison to 2017, the RLD has gained both in number of seats and the vote share when it contested in an alliance with the SP in 2022. But SP president Akhilesh Yadav had become more confident of defeating the BJP when he forged an alliance with the Suheldeo Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and Apna Dal (Kamerawadi) in Central and eastern UP as he hoped that both the parties will bring non-Yadav OBCs into the SP-alliance camp. The SBSP was BJP’s ally in 2017 when it contested on eight seats and won four with a success rate of 50 per cent. But it quit the alliance before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In the 2022 elections, the SBSP got 18 seats to contest and won only six seats, with a success rate of 33 per cent. Party president Om Prakash Rajbhar won from Zahoorabad in Ghazipur district for a second consecutive term as MLA and his own vote share increased to 46.45 per cent from 37.51 per cent in 2017. But his son Arvind Rajbhar lost from Shivpur in Varanasi district even after his vote share too increased to 34.77 per cent from 19.25 per cent from 2017 when he had contested from Bansdih in Ballia district. Apna Dal (Kamerawadi), a splinter group of Apna Dal founded by the late Kurmi leader Sonelal Patel, contested on four seats in alliance with the SP but lost all. Party president Krishna Patel lost from Pratapgarh, where she got 33 per cent votes. She had lost from the Rohaniya seat in Varanasi as an Independent with 4.12 per cent vote share in 2017. Krishna’s daughter Pallavi contested the election on SP ticket and won in Sirathu, defeating BJP’s deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya by a margin of 7,337 votes. Pallavi’s younger sister Anupriya Patel is president of Apna Dal (Sonelal) that is an ally of BJP both in UP and the Centre. Anupriya is a minister in the union cabinet. She fielded candidates on 17 seats and 12 of them won with a success rate of 70 per cent. With that performance, Apna Dal (S) has become the third largest party in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly after BJP and SP. In Rohaniya seat in Varanasi, Apna Dal (S) and Apna Dal (K) fought against each other with a candidate of same caste “Patel” (OBC) and the former's nominee won and got around 19 per cent more votes than Apna Dal (K). Another BJP ally, Nishad Party, contested on 10 seats and recorded victory in six seats with a success rate of 60 per cent. In 2017, Nishad party had contested on 72 seats without any alliance and had won only one seat and its 70 candidates had lost deposits. To accommodate its two allies - Apna Dal (S) and Nishad Party - considering the social equations, the BJP had denied tickets to its sitting MLAs on 14 seats. The SP had given one seat, Anupshahr, to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) but the alliance candidate finished third as the BJP won there.
