Struggling to formulate a credible narrative ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Samajwadi Party is working out an effective strategy to consolidate its Other Backward Classes vote bank. To take on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva ideology, the SP is also attempting to pursue soft Hindutva.
The BJP, since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, has made a significant dent in the OBC vote bank in Uttar Pradesh. For the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the SP and the BJP are major contenders to woo OBCs who constitute a significant 40 per cent to 45 per cent of the state’s electorate.
The SP is organising cadre training camps and taking out yatras to mobilise support for the caste-based census aimed at mobilising all OBCs under its umbrella. The BJP, on the other hand, is planning conferences and rallies which aim at establishing separate identities for each caste group, effectively preventing them from consolidating under the common Backward Class grouping as the SP is drawing them towards it.
The BJP, on June 10, held a rally to commemorate Maharaja Suheldev in Ghazipur district, and it was addressed by cabinet minister Anil Rajbhar, the BJP’s leading face from the Rajbhar community. Maharaja Suheldev was a legendary king from Shravasti, whom various caste groups have attempted to appropriate as their own, including the Rajbhars, a numerically significant OBC group in eastern UP. Before the 2022 UP assembly polls, the BJP held many such social and political gatherings focused on such non-Yadav OBC groups. It is likely the party will organise more such events, appropriating OBC icons with the aim of establishing a separate identity for each caste group, in a bid to consolidate its non-Yadav OBC vote bank before the 2024 election.
The choice of Ghazipur for outreach to the Rajbhar community was interesting as the BJP lost this Lok Sabha seat by over one lakh votes in 2019 parliamentary elections in which Bahujan Samaj Party candidate Afzal Ansari defeated the BJP heavyweight and then-Union Minister Manoj Sinha. The district remained a tough electoral landscape for the party even in the 2022 assembly polls, as the BJP lost all the seven seats in the district and also lost five out of nine seats in neighbouring Jaunpur.
Recently, Narendra Kashyap, president of the UP BJP Other Backward Classes Morcha, also announced that the party would organise large conferences of the OBC community in all the 98 organisational districts and 17 cities of the state, to apprise them of the development works which the Union government had done for them.
“Under the Maha Sampark Abhiyan, the Backward Class Morcha will organise conferences with the OBC community in all 98 organisational districts of Uttar Pradesh and in 17 cities of the state in which the work done for the development of OBCs in the Narendra Modi-Yogi Adityanath governments will be discussed by inviting intellectuals from the community. The OBC Morcha will inform the community about the decisions taken in the interests of OBCs in the Modi government,” Kashyap said.
The SP, to counter the BJP and consolidate its base, has planned to organise conferences and is organising cadre training camps under the Lok Jagran Abhiyan, keeping the demand for a caste-based census in UP at its core, and aiming to mobilise all OBCs.
“We know we face a tough task as the BJP, by consistently focusing on the non-Yadav OBC vote bank, has carved out a vote bank among the OBCs. Bringing them back to the SP fold will be a tough task as they are no longer only OBCs, but are also the ‘labharthi’ (beneficiaries) of the various welfare schemes launched by the BJP during the last decade,” said a senior SP leader.