Samajwadi Party clear leader in main opposition race in UP, steady decline for BSP

NEW DELHI: The Samajwadi Party aced the first electoral test since the general election to establish itself as the main opposition in Uttar Pradesh, even as the BJP and allies cemented its commanding position in the country’s most populous state by winning eight out of the 11 assembly seats for which by-elections were held.
The SP not only retained its Rampur seat but also snatched one seat each from the BJP and the Bahujan Samaj Party in the first set of electoral battles since BSP leader Mayawati snapped the alliance with it complaining that the SP’s votes did not get transferred to the BSP in the Lok Sabha polls.

The BSP had a policy of not contesting bypolls but it started contesting from May this year when it fielded its candidate from Hamirpur assembly seat. In the latest round of bypolls, the SP got 22.61% votes while the BSP got 17.02% votes. “On two seats – Ghosi and Iglas – there were no candidates from the SP,” senior SP leader Udayveer Singh told ET. “If you minus these two seats, then our voting percentage on rest nine seats was over 32%.”

The SP had left Iglas for its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal, which fielded Suman Diwakar. However, her nomination was cancelled on the grounds of incomplete papers. Similarly, the SP candidate from Ghosi lost his nomination over incomplete papers. But the SP candidate later contested as an independent supported by the party.

The BSP came second on two seats – Jalalpur and Iglas. Jalalpur was a BSP seat which had fallen vacant after sitting MLA Ritesh Pandey became an MP from Ambedkar Nagar. In Iglas, there was no SP-RLD candidate.

The BSP also witnessed a decline in votes in several assembly constituencies. In Ghosi, it got 50,775 votes, around 30,000 less than it had got in the 2017 assembly election. In Balha, a reserved constituency, its votes declined to 31,640 votes and its candidate finished third while it had won 57,519 votes and its candidate was the runner-up in the 2017 state polls.

In Pratapgarh, the BSP candidate got 19,000 votes, fewer than even the AIMIM candidate, who got 20,269 votes. In 2017, the BSP had got 41,750 votes in Pratapgarh, securing the third position. In six of the 11 assembly seats, the BSP secured fewer votes than the Congress.

Mayawati termed it a conspiracy by the BJP to make SP win some seats and defeat the BSP. But the voting pattern indicates that there has been a constant decline for the BSP.

“The good thing for the SP is that we are getting anti-BJP votes from all the communities,” said Udayveer Singh.

In Zaidpur, SP candidate Gaurav Kumar defeated BJP’s Ambrish by 4,165 votes. The seat fell vacant after the sitting BJP MLA Upendra Rawat had won the Barabanki Lok Sabha seat. In 2017, SP candidate Ramgopal Yadav had got only 4,383 votes. This time he got over 78,000 votes. The BSP’s votes declined to 18,202 from 48,095 in 2017.