Uttar Pradesh Election 2022: BSP looking to improve its No. 2 position on 30 seats in West UP

LUCKNOW: BSP hopes to strike it rich in the first phase of Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, basing its confidence on its 2017 performance when the party stood second in 30 of 58 seats even though it could win only two, and hopes to cash in on anti-incumbency against BJP.
BSP sources said, party chief Mayawati is expected to hit the ground running in the next few days.Meanwhile, party MP Satish Chandra Mishra has scheduled several meetings in west UP, having spent significant time campaigning in reserved constituencies and among upper castes.
“If you scan the list of candidates, we have given tickets to candidates who can get us votes of their community over and above the party’s own core vote base. Also, BSP stood second on 30 seats while SP came second on 14. In 2017, the Jat community voted almost en bloc for BJP and if it breaks away this year, BSP is confident of mopping up votes and stands to gain more than SP-RLD,” said a party member.
However, BSP has to work hard to consolidate its Dalit votes if it hopes to scale up its performance. If Mayawati, who is yet to step into the battleground, fails to mobilise the entire Dalit vote, not just of Jatavs, there is always a danger of it drifting towards BJP as SP carries the baggage of a Yadav party. In 2017, of nine reserved constituencies, BSP stood second in six with a vote share below 30%.
The other problem that BSP hopes to address is the huge difference in votes polled with BJP, even on seats where it stood second. In 2017, BSP won the Dhaulana seat with 35% votes, while BJP was second with 34%. In Mant, the other seat it won, the second place went to RLD with a difference of just 0.21% in vote share.
Meanwhile, the closest it came to BJP on seats where the former won, was in Thana Bhawan and Bah, where the difference in vote share between the two was a significant 8%. “Admittedly, there was a wave in BJP’s favour in 2017, which saw its candidates bag over 40% vote share across constituencies. However, we do not anticipate such a vote in an anti-incumbency year and therefore, there are likely to be more close fights this time,” said a party member.