Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, March 21: As the BJP’s Yogi Adityanath government is scheduled to be re-installed in Uttar Pradesh on March 25, the Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav is still in dilemma over a difficult decision, whether to opt to stay in the state Assembly or continue with his membership of the Lok Sabha.
Yadav will have to take a final call sooner than later as he was elected to the UP Assembly from Karhal while he continue to remain a MP representing Azamgarh seat he won in the 2019 Parliamentary elections. He had opted to contest the Assembly elections in 2022, his first, hoping for a majority for his party which would have anointed him as the chief minister but his party failed to oust the BJP from power.
Akhilesh and the SP is in a catch-22 situation caught up between two options and the circumstances are such that the SP chief would have to do a tightrope walk. Many of the party leaders are of the opinion that Yadav should stay on in the state Assembly to try improve the SP’s chances of gaining a clear majority in the next elections in 2027, but many others believed that his quitting Delhi would mean losing focus on the 2024 Parliamentary elections in which UP’s 80 Lok Sabha seats contribute crucially in deciding the ultimate winner in the country.
Akhilesh Yadav is an elected Member of Parliament (MP) from Azamgarh Lok Sabha constituency and in the recently concluded Assembly polls, he won the Karhal Assembly seat with a decisive lead of over 67,000 votes. Now, the dilemma before Akhilesh Yadav is whether to continue as Parliamentarian or adorn a new role of legislator. He can’t hold both public offices at the same time.
In the 2022 elections, the SP got a much bigger mandate than the 2017 Assembly elections and it shows up in poll numbers. It registered the biggest jump in vote share compared to other parties and its seats tripled from 47 to 111. Still, the party is far from corridors of power.
Akhilesh served as UP Chief Minister for a full 5-year term from 2012-2017. But, he never got elected from any Assembly constituency. Even when he was CM, he became a member of the Legislative Assembly and then took charge of the state. When SP marched to power in 2012, he was a Lok Sabha MP from the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat.
Even when the SP chief sat in Opposition, he never contested Assembly elections. His political career started in 2000 but in 2 decades of his career, his politics centred around national politics. It’s only when Yogi’s challenge looked formidable and chances of SP revival looked bleak that he chose to fight polls from the Karhal Assembly seat.
Now, that he has defeated Karhal’s rival by a big margin, the question before is to quit what – Assembly or LS seat. Leaving any of them would send a message that Akhilesh chose to desert the people of that constituency for his own political ambition.
Akhilesh and his political advisors are in a huddle over making the difficult choice. Assembly elections are over and Parliamentary polls are due in the next 2 years. In such a scenario, quitting the national space could also backfire given the fact that Gandhi’s siblings have thrown their weight in the poll arena and AAP is also gaining strength. However, the party also leave its Opposition space in the state, in jeopardy.
Though the SP lost the assembly polls to the BJP, the party improved its vote share substantially and Akhilesh won his first assembly election. Similarly, the party’s other senior leader Azam Khan, also an MP from Rampur, also won the Assembly elections from Rampur.
The issue is learnt to have surfaced during SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s meeting with alliance partner Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief Om Prakash Rajbhar and Mahan Dal president Keshav Dev Maurya on Friday and Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia (PSP-L) president Shivpal Yadav…”
Many of the party leaders believe that Yadav’s immediate priority would be 2024 parliamentary polls and his presence in the Lok Sabha would be crucial in helping arrive at understandings with parties opposed to the BJP. But several of the SP activists are also keen that Akhilesh stay on as MLA and “lead the Opposition’s charge against the Yogi Adityanath government in the Assembly as the party wishes to build on the momentum for 2027 (when next assembly polls will be due). Akhilesh’s presence as party leader in the Assembly would keep the Yogi government on its toes.” Many ascribe the SP’s loss in the recent elections was caused by Yadav remaining aloof and away in Delhi through most of Yogi’s tenure as the chief minister and not taking up major public issues aggressively. This group want Yadav to hold on to the Karhal seat to make a point that he is serious about the State politics and send a message to the SP’s strong supporters, the Yadavs and Muslims.
In the last elections, despite the party’s stronger presence elsewhere, the SP did not do as well as expected in the Yadav-Muslim belt. The BJP won 18 of the 29 seats spread over eight districts of Kasganj, Firozabad, Mainpuri, Etawah and Etah, Auraiya, Farrukabad, and Kannauj which have a significant Yadav-Muslim population and were once the bastion of the SP party. The SP won only 10 seats in these districts. One seat was bagged by the BJP ally Apna Dal (Sonelal). The BJP clean-swept three districts: Etah, Farrukabad, and Kannauj. Observers said if the SP wanted to return to power, it had to sweep these districts and do well in at least the urban constituencies of the Yadav belt.
Even the SP’s allies are pointing out that Yadav’s decision to contest from Karhal in Mainpuri couldn’t help in improving the performance of the party in the region. In Mainpuri district, the party won only two out of four seats. The reason for the SP less than expected performance in the belt was also partly attributed to the Bahujan Samaj Party which substantially lost support among the voters in the belt and its lost votes instead of the SP were transferred to the BJP.
Apart from the national role in the Lok Sabha polls, the confusion is perhaps also emanating from the fact that the SP swept all the 10 assembly constituencies in Azamgarh, the Lok Sabha seat of Yadav. Though Muslims are in fewer numbers in Azamgarh in comparison to most West and Central U.P. seats, holding it will send a message among Muslims, who stood by the party.
