A new political alliance led by the Bahuhjan Samaj Party and Bhagidari Sankalp Morcha comprising Om Prakash Rajbhar-led Suheldeo Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and AIMIM is likely to include three more small political parties.
BSP chief Mayawati and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi have held several rounds of talks and the latter is coming to Lucknow next month. The alliance is likely to be formalised and the BSP supremo is expected to make the announcement. Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh are scheduled for early next year.
Om Prakash Rajbhar had dropped hints about broadening the alliance on June 20. Rajbhar said he was trying to rope in several other parties, including TMC and Aam Aadmi Party to form an effective front to counter the BJP.
In the 2017 UP Assembly elections, the SBSP in alliance with the BJP had contested eight seats and won four. Rajbhar was made a cabinet minister but he was dismissed in May 2019 soon after the Lok Sabha elections.
The SBSP, for strengthening its ground in eastern Uttar Pradesh, had stitched up an alliance with the Hyderabad-based All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) in January earlier this year.
AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi had made a one-day tour to Purvanchal with Rajbhar. Owaisi visited Azamgarh and Jaunpur districts.
In UP, Owaisi has joined hands with SBSP and eight other parties, including Krishna Patel’s Apna Dal, Jan Adhikar Party and Chandrasekhar Ravan’s Azad Samaj Party.
This Bhagidari Sankalp Morcha has announced to contest the 2022 UP Assembly elections against the BJP to represent the unheard Muslim-Backward and Dalit caste voices. The Apna Dal (Krishna Patel) is likely to quit the alliance as it is said to have cut a deal with the BJP. Its president Krishna Patel is likely to be nominated as the member of the UP Legislative Council. The Apna Dal (Sonelal) led by Anupriya Patel MP, daughter of Krishna Patel, is already an ally of the BJP.
Ever since the entry of the AIMIM in Bihar elections in October last year, small caste-based political parties have been trying to get the caste arithmetic in their favour in eastern UP.
Although the Bhagidari Sankalp Morcha and Owaisi in particular have been targeting the BJP, the presence of this alliance in Azamgarh and adjoining districts will directly affect the Samajwadi Party performance in the region. With the new alliance coming up with a combination of the extreme backward Muslim population, it will primarily dent the SP vote bank.
SP sources said the entry of the BSP with an almost committed vote bank of 20 per cent would make it a deadly political combination which would directly target the roots of the Samajwadi Party.
A Samajwadi Party MLA said this alliance would almost entirely target the vote bank of the SP as also division of the anti-BJP votes, thus immensely benefitting the ruling party in the 2022 UP Assembly elections.