With the aim to consolidate its Other Backward Classes (OBC) vote bank ahead of the 2022 UP Assembly elections, Samajwadi Party has appointed 15 new district presidents, giving preference to this class. The party is anxious to consolidate its core vote bank of Yadavs and other caste groups in the OBC category. Its focus is evident in the list of 15 new district chiefs as eight of them are from the Yadav caste.
The SP brass has appointed Yadav leaders as district chiefs in Basti, Auraiya, Etawah, Lucknow, Jalaun, Unnao, Kanpur Dehat and Gonda.
Other OBCs in the SP list of district chiefs include a Gujjar in Saharanpur, Pal in Mainpuri and Maurya in Bareilly. Besides, Muslim leaders have been made district chiefs in Bulandshahr and Ghaziabad.
In Muzaffarnagar, the SP has appointed a Brahmin as its district chief and in Mathura, a
Rajput.
The SP decision of focusing on OBCs is apparently to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party which is making inroads into the Other Backward Classes.
The BJP list of district chiefs, announced two days ago, gives importance to the OBCs, posing a direct threat to the SP, which has been going downhill after Akhilesh Yadav became the chief minister in 2012 and then the SP president in 2017.
In the 2014 polls, the SP managed to win five Lok Sabha seats and in 2017 Assembly polls, it was reduced to 47 seats. However, victory of SP candidates in bypoll to three Lok Sabha seats in 2018 pushed its number to eight.
In the 2019 poll, the SP could win only five Lok Sabha seats while three members of SP first family — Dimple Yadav (Kannauj), Dharmendra Yadav (Badaun) and Akshay Yadav (Ferozabad), faced defeat.
Another factor that has been troubling Akhilesh is that uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav-led Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) may not have won any seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections but it dented SP vote base.
SP state chief Naresh Uttam said that preference had been given to youth, particularly those who were active in student politics.
“We are only concerned with leaders in our party and those who strengthen the outfit,” he said.
A senior SP leader said that with the exit of the Bharatiya Janata Party from Maharashtra, ‘achhe din’ are coming for the opposition.
“You will see similar things happening in UP in 2022, as people of the state, like other states, are fed up with the arrogance of BJP leaders and ministers. The emergence of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray as a rallying point has laid the foundation for realignment of political forces and will prove that the BJP is not invincible,” he said.