Akhilesh Yadav man of the moment, Samajwadi Party single-largest party in Uttar Pradesh, third in country
After a string of poll reverses since 2017, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav has finally delivered with his party putting in its best-ever performance in the Lok Sabha elections to win 37 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh and emerging as the single-largest party in the country’s most populous state where it reduced the ruling BJP to 33 seats from 62 in 2019. The SP emerged as the third largest party in the country after the BJP and the Congress.
Yadav and his party, leading the INDIA bloc in Uttar Pradesh, dealt the biggest blow to the ruling BJP nationally as the INDIA bloc overtook the NDA with the SP-Congress alliance winning 43 seats. The NDA secured 36 seats in the state.
The SP’s previous best Lok Sabha poll performance was in 2004 when it had won 35 seats in Uttar Pradesh.
In 2024, the SP’s strike rate was the highest among the big parties as it won 37 of the 62 seats it contested while the BJP could win only 33 of the 76 it contested in Uttar Pradesh.
Among all the political parties in the country, the SP took the biggest leap with a seven-fold increase from its five-seat tally in 2019.
In 2004, when the SP won 35 seats, its founder Mulayam Singh Yadav headed the government in Uttar Pradesh. Now, the party’s success has come despite remaining out of power in the state for seven years.
Poll percentage-wise, the SP attained a 33.59% vote share in 2024 against 18.11% in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh.
In the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, the SP’s vote share was 32.1% and the tally of seats went up to 111 from 47 in 2017, laying the foundation of the 2024 performance.
In the 2022 polls, the SP began expanding beyond its MY (Muslim-Yadav) vote bank to stitch together a caste coalition of non-Yadav OBCs+Yadavs+Dalits+Muslims.
Retaining this formula for the 2024 elections, Akhilesh named it PDA — Pichada (backwards including Yadavs and non-Yadavs), Dalits and Alpsahkhyaks (minorities,largely Muslims).
Bolstering the PDA formula with the caste census demand, he launched a PDA-caste census bus yatra across the state in June.
“Samajik Nyay Jaatiya Janganana Rasta (Caste census is the path to social justice)” was boldly printed on all sides of the red bus that Akhilesh rode across the state.
He galvanised the party’s agenda, campaign, and even the reorganisation and ticket distribution plan around PDA and caste census, playing the caste card as a counter to the BJP’s Hindutva and Ram Mandir.
When the INDIA bloc was formed, Akhilesh found it to his liking right from the start but with the rider that the strongest party in a state should lead the alliance there.
With some roller-coaster moments in INDIA bloc’s seat-sharing, Akhilesh stayed adamant and finally kept 62 seats with the SP and gave 17 to Congress and one to the Trinamool Congress. By that time, the Congress also took up the caste census demand.
Ahead of the 2024 polls, the SP reorganised its national and state executives, giving most posts to non-Yadav OBCs, Dalits, Muslims, and Yadavs. The same formula was adhered to in ticket distribution for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Of the 62 seats that the SP contested, it gave tickets to 27 non-Yadav OBCs, five Yadavs (all Yadav family members of the SP), 15 Dalits, four Muslims, and 11 upper caste leaders.
Akhilesh-Rahul revived their “UP ke ladkey” image of the 2017 alliance and vibed well.
The SP or the Congress did not respond much to the BJP’s Hindutva-Ram temple-Ram and Hindu-Muslim plank and instead kept their focus on “social justice, youth, unemployment, paper-leaks, caste census, economy, etc”.
Despite all the criticism by the BJP over the SP fielding five Yadavs, and all of them from the SP’s first family, even this formula worked.
All the five Yadavs–Akhilesh Yadav (Kannauj), his wife and Mainpuri MP Dimple Yadav, his cousins Akshaya Yadav (Firozabad), Aditya Yadav (Badaun), and Dharmendra Yadav (Azamgarh) won their seats.