With 2024 general election on mind, BJP intends to remedy reduced seats in recent UP Assembly poll
Vibha Sharma
New Delhi, April 25
The BJP may have won the high-stakes election to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly but the worries of the central leadership appear far from being over with the 2024 general election on its mind.
Sources say the central leadership is planning to counter factors that resulted in the reduced number of seats the saffron party and its allies bagged in the 2022 Assembly election as compared to the one in 2017.
According to a “report prepared by the state BJP leadership”, apart from a certain shift in votes of the OBC castes like Kushwaha, Saini, Kurmi, Maurya, Nishad, Pal, Shakya, Rajbhar towards the Samajwadi Party, “polarisation” of Muslim votes was also another reason for gains by the main rival in the state.
Other factors reportedly identified for the tally coming down from 312 to 255 include “floating votes” and votes of allies not transferring to BJP candidates.
Observers say that given that the road to the Lok Sabha is via the 80 constituencies in UP, the dip in the number of seats despite an increase in vote share is a cause of concern for the BJP leadership in the 2024 general election.
In fact, the buzz is that the saffron leadership is already on the job. A “saffron hand” is being attributed to the “growing closeness” between Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party Lohia leader and Akhilesh Yadav’s uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav and jailed Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan.
Shivpal, who met Azam Khan in Sitapur jail last week, is said to be “upset” with Akhilesh Yadav.
Though Shivpal won the recent assembly polls on an SP ticket, his growing closeness to the BJP, even meeting Adityanath once, has been the talk of the power corridors in Lucknow.
He has also dared Akhilesh to expel him from the party if he felt that he was indulging in anti-party activities.
The supporters of Azam Khan, meanwhile, are “upset with Akhilesh Yadav” because of his “silence on the manner in which the BJP was targeting Azam Khan and the community,” which voted for the SP.
The coming together of an OBC and a Muslim leader as a political formation can spell trouble for Akhilesh Yadav, who is now believed to be trying to defuse the situation by reaching out to them.
So far, as the BJP is concerned, sources say the central leadership wants to take care of all the factors that led to decrease in the number of seats despite the special membership drive in which “80 lakh new members were added”.
Also on the radar is NDA’s poor performance in Ghazipur, Ambedkar Nagar and Azamgarh districts and the SP alliance getting more postal votes than the BJP on more than 300 seats.
Inputs from UP are being studied by BJP’ strategists with 2024 on mind, when the party aims for return to the Centre, sources said.
