Armed with the fresh slogan ‘80 harao, BJP hatao’ (defeat Bharatiya Janata Party on all 80 UP Lok Sabha seats and oust it), the Samajwadi Party has embarked on its most ambitious mission since its inception in October 1992. Though no radical move and out of box measures have been announced by the SP, the party is confident that with the two-pronged strategy of ‘soft Hindutva’ and mobilisation of the caste based OBCs vote bank by pursuing the campaign for caste based census' it can break the hegemony of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.
The SP has suffered crushing defeats in four elections – two Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019 and two UP assembly elections in 2017 and 2022. SP leaders said besides ‘soft Hindutva’ and caste based identity politics, “cadre strengthening” and “booth management” would be the mainstay of the party’s 2024 poll strategy.
“With the cadre training camp in Naimisharanya we have launched Mission 2024 with the aim to win all 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh in the 2024 general election. This training camp will mark the beginning of the destruction of the BJP which is ‘asur’ (demon),” a SP leader said.
The functioning of the camp makes it a special one, say SP leaders.
“Unlike previous instances, when the party’s focus was either on making big promises or highlighting the development work that the previous SP government carried out, it is for the first time when the entire focus is on strengthening the cadre, especially at the booth level,” a senior party leader said.
The party has shortlisted under-40 leaders who would be imparted special training to connect the youths with the SP. As per the party’s roadmap for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, at least 10 new cadres are to be roped in at each booth to make the SP’s presence more visible at the ground level, another leader said and added, “That is why, the party is organising a similar exercise at all 80 Lok Sabha seats of UP.”
A senior SP leader pointed out that “the party cadre is also being trained to create awareness among the people and to make them aware of the game plan of the BJP to divide and rule the Other Backward Classes through Hindutva ideology and impose the dominance of the upper castes and also expose the nefarious ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh”.
He added, “Once the cadres are made well versed with the new political narrative of the party, they would fan out to sector and booth levels in rural areas to spread the message.”
With the decline of the Bahujan Samaj Party in UP, the SP is confident that it can woo the Dalits from the BSP, as they are in desperate search of a new political master. The SP has set up a separate wing, Ambedkar Vahini Samajwadi, to woo the community. “Ambedkar Vahini Samajwadi youths would focus on unity, social justice and caste census, which is key to development,” a party leader said.
“There is nothing new in the strategy of the SP. It was already there during the time of Mulayam Singh Yadav. The only thing is that the SP, under the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav, has opted for it now. The party was in dire need of strengthening its cadre,” a political analyst said.
