BJP, that had won 62 Lok Sabha Constituencies out of 80 in the state in 2019 with 49.56 per cent of votes share has been reduced to 33 seats and 41.37 per cent of vote share. On the other hand, SP has increased its tally during this period from only 5 seats to 37 with rise in votes share from 17.96 per cent to 33.59 per cent. SP’s ally INC has increased its seats from just 1 to 6 and vote share 6.31 per cent to 9.46 per cent. It should be noted that the INC which is traditionally a centrist political party, its leader Rahul Gandhi has pitched its political campaign on almost socialist lines.

The rise of the SP led by Akhilesh Yadav in Lok Sabha election 2024 is just a further consolidation of its rise in Vidhan Sabha election 2022, when the party was able to increase its seats to 111 in a house of 403 from just 47 in 2017, with vote share increased to 32.06 per cent from 21.82 per cent.

The rise of Akhilesh Yadav’s SP has been attributed to his newly formulated strategy of PDA – Peechhra the Backward Classes, Dalits the Scheduled Castes, and Alpasankhyak the minorities. This political strategy can be narrowed down to – OBCs, Dalits, and Muslims. This he called social justice and brought forward as a political tool against the BJP’s Hindutva and Hindu communalism that was translated in the state into appeasement of Hindus and bulldozer against the Muslims. Inauguration of Ram Temple in Ayodhya by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the zenith of Hindutva politic. However, BJP’s politics fell flat before the SP’s campaign plank..

Rahul Gandhi, whose INC allied with the Akhilesh’s SP, had also pitched for social justice, and had said that their INDIA bloc would get caste census done in the country to give proper share to various social groups in development proportionate to their population. He had said that 90 per cent of the population representing “Dalit, Adivasis, OBCs, and minorities” were unrepresented across different fields and there were “two different set of rules” although the Constitution of India was a “document of equality”. He also added that the BJP’s “system is aligned against lower castes.”

The success of the campaign of social justice was though seen across the Uttar Pradesh, the most symbolic win was in the Faizabad Lok Sabha Constituency where a Dalit candidate Awadhesh Prasad fielded by SP defeated BJP candidate Lallu Singh. It was most significant because this constituency houses the Ram Temple of Ayodhya around which BJP’s election campaign chiefly centred along with hate speeches against Muslims. The people of the constituency resented that BJP went for grand Ram Temple for the Hindus across the country but ignored the development and people of this constituency. People thought that temple was not enough for them. They needed social justice, decent livelihood opportunities, and development, far more than temple and communalism.

The final result shows that among the successful SP candidates, 86 per cent are from the OBC, Dalit, and Muslim communities. This percentage is just according to the election pitch of Rahul Gandhi. The winner OBC candidates from SP were 20 in number, while 8 were from SC category, and 4 from Muslim community. The rest 5 winner SP candidates were from Caste Hindus – 1 from Brahmin, 1 from Vaishya, 1 from Bhumihar, and 2 from Kshatriyas.

Congress, the SP’s ally in INDIA bloc, had won 6 seats, out of which 1 is from OBC, 1 is from SC, and 1 is from Muslim community. Two seats gone to Brahmin winners, including Rai Bareilly, while 1 winner was Kshatriya.

Thus, among the socialist SP and centrist INC political parties, out of 43 seats they have won, 33 went to OBC, 19 to Dalits and 6 to Muslims. Their social engineering is well pronounced in their success. It should be noted that Akhilesh Yadav has experimented this time a remarkable strategy of fielding SC candidates even from non-reserved general seat, such as in Meerut and Faizabad. Experiment in Faizabad succeeded, even though it is a general seat, and the seat of Ram in Ayodhya.

Even in general Meerut seat, SP’s Dalit candidate lost by only a narrow margin of about 10,500 votes to BJP’s Arun Govil famous for playing the character of Lord Ram in one of the most popular TV serial Ramayana. This loss by wafer thin margin is significant in a superstitious country like ours, where people believed PM Modi’s superstitious words and tried to drive away COVID-19 in 2020 just by the beating of utensils. There was a time in the late 1980s when Arun Govil in the character of Ram was worshiped when serial used to start on TV screens in Indian homes.

The change now seen in Uttar Pradesh likely to have far reaching political effect across the country. More so because, people are likely to compare SP’s performance in the Lok Sabha election 2024 in terms of winning MPs from the BJP, which is dominated by upper castes. Since the Ram Temple – Babri Mosque movement in the late 1980s, the Caste Hindus of Uttar Pradesh have been voting for the BJP.

Politically speaking, the movement was branded as a Kamandal (a religious pot being carried by Hindu mendicants) politics as opposed to Mandal politics which was started by the Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh. It boosted up the socialists in the country who pioneered the Mandal politics in the 1990s and afterwards. In opposition to Mandal Politics, Kamandal politics regained ground resulting in demolition of Babri Mosque in 1992.

Soon thereafter, the BJP started the social engineering process, by attracting Dalits, and Backward Classes, and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). PM Narendra Modi is himself from OBC community and has been promoting OBC politics within the BJP, though Caste Hindus are still dominant in the party, along with the trading Hindu communities of the country. The Uttar Pradesh result shows that OBCs, Dalits, and Minorities are strongly supporting the SP led by Akhilesh, indirectly showing distrust in the Hindutva politics of PM Narendra Modi and the BJP.

People are comparing how about 45 per cent of the BJP’s winning candidates are from the Caste Hindu communities including the trading Vaishya communities. Out of 33, BJP had won, 15 are from upper castes and Vaishyas – 8 from Brahmin, 5 from Kshatriya, and 2 from the Vaishyas, as against their estimated population of 20 per cent. The rest 10 are from OBCs and 8 are from Dalits. Taking together, OBCs and Dalits winning BJP candidates are about 55 per cent as against their estimated population of 60 per cent.

In the outgoing Lok Sabha out of BJP’s 62 MPs, there were 28 from upper castes and Vaishyas – 12 from Brahmins, 11 Kshatriyas, and 5 Vaishyas – totaling 45 per cent at the same level as in 2024. It obviously had 55 per cent OBCs and SCs winning candidate 20 and 14 respectively, the percentage remains the same in 2024. There has been no change in BJP’s social strategy, which is seen anti-PDA, means anti-OBC, anti-Dalit, and anti-Minority in the state.

Since the BJP is seen pursuing the same strategy across the country as it has been pursing in Uttar Pradesh, the PDA strategy of SP leader Akhilesh Yadav seems to have an edge among the people in the state, and is most likely to be imitated across the country by the INDIA bloc constituent parties, especially in the Hindi heartland.

All these indicate that India has entered a cusp of a changing political landscape, beginning from the political battle between the rightwing hyper national Hindutva politics and a progressive one led by the INDIA bloc. Rise of the SP leader Akhilesh Yadav brought by his new strategy of PDA is thus significant. (IPA Service)