Akhilesh did not lose even after losing! The lamp of hope lit for 2024?
BJP may be cheering with the latest election results of Uttar Pradesh, but Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav won more than 70 seats as compared to 2017 Has done less but has also drawn a long line in front of BJP for 2024. This is evidenced by the jump in the vote share of the SP.
The performance of SP is at its historical peak. Akhilesh Yadav has collected more votes than Netaji i.e. Akhilesh’s father and SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav could not collect. Talking about the figures, the Samajwadi Party, founded in 1992, contested the first Legislative Assembly election in UP in 1993 and then the SP got 17.94% of the votes. Three years later, in the 1996 elections, under Mulayam Singh’s leadership, this vote share increased by nearly four per cent to 21.8%.
This was followed by 25.37% in 2002 and 25.43% in 2007 respectively. Before the 2012 assembly elections, Netaji gave his son a bicycle. Akhilesh not only increased the vote percentage of SP to 29.15% by running cycles from village to village and city to city, but also formed a strong government in the state for five years.
Between power gluttony and family strife, the relationship in the largest Yadav family of UP deteriorated in such a way that political swords were drawn between the father and the son as well. The result of this political drama was not only shown in the form of loss of power, but the vote percentage of SP also fell from 29.85 percent to 21.82% in the 2017 assembly elections.
Between 2017 and 2022, Akhilesh did many experiments. Sometimes the aunt, who was a fierce political enemy of her father, put Mayawati’s elephant on a bicycle, sometimes the country’s oldest party, Congress and Chaudhary Charan Singh’s heir Jayant Choudhary’s National Lok Dal did a jugglebandi. In the 2022 elections, he followed the path of BJP and formed a rainbow alliance of all the backward castes, but he stayed away from power. However, due to his innovative use, he got 36.1% vote share, which never came in the account of SP till today.
How will the 2022 election results affect the 2024 Lok Sabha elections?
The alliance with all the smaller parties has benefited the SP in the form of vote share in every corner of the state. In Awadh Bundelkhand and North-East, the SP has gained about 13 per cent votes, 15 per cent in Eastern UP and Rohilkhand, 18 per cent in Western UP and 8 per cent in Doab.
Along with this, Akhilesh created such an air against the BJP that women are demanding an account from the ruling party by making issues of security and inflation, youth jobs and unemployment, government employees old pension system, Dalit oppression and farmers MSP. Due to Mayawati’s inaction, the Dalit vote bank may have joined Kamal Dal in the mirage of free ration and other welfare schemes and has also increased the vote percentage of BJP by five percent, but when Mayawati becomes active, then the danger of slipping that community is in favor of BJP. could be harmful.
What will happen to Congress?
On the one hand, this election has established CM Yogi as a strong leader against PM Modi, on the other hand, Akhilesh Yadav has also been established as an efficient opponent in front of BJP in a vast state like UP. The Congress, running in its different tune, has also been thrown to the ground by the latest election results. Congress must have understood very well that now is not the time to play on its front foot in Indian politics, especially in Uttar Pradesh, from where 80 MPs are elected and the direction of the country’s politics is decided.
These election results have forced all the opposition parties including the Congress to step in with the SP. As West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress President Mamata Banerjee supported Akhilesh and there has been a flurry of non-Congress alternatives from south to north, Akhilesh’s rainbow alliance has emerged as a new hope in the 2024 elections. And for other states where Mandal versus Kamandal politics has been going on, it can have a wider impact.
