By Dr. Gyan Pathak
When politics on the ground is changing faster than a survey can comprehend, changing perhaps on a weekly basis, the opinion polls conducted a fortnight or a month ago lose their validity in the present time, even if we presume that they have been conducted in impartial manner. Therefore, the India TV-CNX opinion poll projecting NDA winning 78 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh, and the News18 opinion poll projecting that NDA will win 77 seats, cease to have any real value, since both were conducted in February 2024. The first fortnight of March has considerably changed the political scenario, which has the NDA and the BJP on tenterhooks, with the possibility of a much closer contest than it had to face in 2019. The Bahujan Samaj Party going solo has strengthened the INDIA bloc, which will be the sole challenger to the BJP and the NDA in Uttar Pradesh.
Both the NDA and the INDIA bloc have finalized their seat-sharing arrangements with their allies in Uttar Pradesh. In NDA’s case, the BJP will be contesting on 74 seats, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) on 2, Apna Dal (Sonelal) on 2, and the NISHAD party and the Suhaldev Bharatiya Samaj Party will fight on one seat each. As for the INDIA bloc, SP will be contesting on 63 seats and Congress on 17 seats. Both the political alliances would be pitted on one-on-one contests on all the 80 Lok Sabha seats.
BSP was part of Mahagathbandhan with the Samajwadi Party in 2019, but is now contesting alone in all 80 Lok Sabha seats. It has resulted in a shift of Muslims and a large part of Dalit communities towards the INDIA bloc. The AIMIM has declared it will contest on 7 seats. SP support base among PDA – (Pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) is gravitating towards the INDIA bloc, benefitting both the Congress and the Samajwadi Party. In such a situation both the surveys appear to be wrong, since they have indirectly said that the loss of BSP is gain for the BJP, and thereby to the NDA, which contradicts all logic, since there is no reason why minority and Dalit support base of the BSP should shift allegiance to the BJP at a time when the INDIA Block is gaining strength.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections BJP had won 62 seats, which was less than the 71 it had won in 2014. The party was able to bag 49.56 per cent of votes, with a swing of 8.26 percent of votes in its favour. However, in the 2022 Vidhan Sabha elections, the situation worsened for the BJP as its vote-share declined to 41.29 per cent, and it could win only 255 out of 403 seats. A loss of 57 seats compared to the 2017 Vidhan Sabha elections. No wonder, BJP needed to recover the loss and the party has no other way than to have a communal polarization through its Hindutva politics.
PM Narendra Modi inaugurated Ram Temple in Ayodhya on January 22. In February, he played Bharat Ratna politics and to win over the farmers of western Uttar Pradesh, Chaudhary Charan Singh was given the Bharat Ratna. This brought RLD leader Jayant Chaudhary to the NDA. PM Modi, however, succeeded only partially. The farmers community by and large are still angry with the BJP government. Their demands for the legal guarantee for MSP and action against Union Minister Ajay Mishra Teny haven’t been met. The RLD is contesting on only two seats and the BJP cannot be certain of farmers supporting the party.
If we look at the political situation in Uttar Pradesh, there will be tough contests between the BJP and the SP in at least 4 divisions – Saharanpur, Moradabad, Ayodhya, and Azamgarh. And the SP has a distinct upper-hand, which was reflected even in the Vidhan Sabha elections of 2022. There are 16 Vidhan Sabha constituencies in Saharanpur, and on 9 of them, there are sitting SP MLAs. Out of 27 Vidhan Sabha seats in Moradabad division, the SP has 17 sitting MLAs. Out of 25 Vidhan Sabha in Ayodhya, 13 were won by the SP, and out of 21 in Azamgarh division, as many as 17 seats have SP MLAs. And Prayagraj and Varanasi have 28 Vidhan Sabhas each, with SP MLAs in 11, and 13 respectively as against BJP’s 14 and 15. There are close contests in at least 6 divisions of the state out of 18.
District-wise support base of SP is much more disturbing for the BJP. SP has majority of Vidhan Sabhas seats in 18 districts out of 75 – Shamli, Mujaffarnagar, Moradabad, Sambhal, Rampur, Meerut, Firozabad, Raebareli, Ambedkar Nagar, Etawah, Auraiya, Kaushambi, Basti, Azamgarh, Mau, Ballia, Jaunpur, and Ghazipur. There are other districts where there will be close contests. Out of 80 Lok Sabha seats, there will be tough contests on 36 seats. The INDIA bloc will challenge the BJP and NDA in 10 other constituencies, if political changes on the ground level continue in the direction in the direction in which they are moving now. (IPA Service)
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