UP: BSP scores naught in LS polls, but denies INDIA 16 seats by cutting votes

Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) did not win any seats in Uttar Pradesh in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, but it helped the BJP win at least 16 seats by eating into INDIA bloc votes. In those 16 seats, it bagged more votes than the BJP or ally candidates’ victory margin.

What could have been

The INDIA bloc won 43 of the 80 seats in UP, with the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) winning 37 seats and the Congress winning six. The NDA won 36 seats, with BJP bagging 33. Had the BSP not cut its vote share, the INDIA bloc would have bagged 59 seats in UP and 250 overall. And, the NDA’s total number of seats would have dropped to 277 and the BJP’s to 226.

The BJP, which lost substantial ground to the Opposition bloc, especially the SP, would have been left with only 19 seats in UP. It is a surprising revelation, considering that the party won 62 seats in the state in 2019.

Bitter 16

The 16 seats, where the BSP spoiled the party for the Opposition bloc, are Akbarpur, Aligarh, Amroha, Bansgaon, Bhadohi, Bijnor, Deoria, Farrukhabad, Fatehpur Sikri, Hardoi, Meerut, Mirzapur, Misrikh, Phulpur, Shahjahanpur, and Unnao. The BJP won 14 of these seats, while its allies Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and Apna Dal (Soneylal) won two seats, Bijnor and Mirzapur.

Of these 16 seats, the BSP candidate (Vijender Singh) polled the highest number of votes — 218,986 — in Bijnor, where the RLD defeated the SP by 37,508 votes.

In Mirzapur, BSP candidate Manish Kumar polled 1,44,446 votes, while BJP’s Anupriya Patel defeated the SP candidate by 37,810 votes. In Shahjahanpur, BJP’s Arun Kumar Sagar, won by 55,379 votes, while BSP’s Dod Ram Verma polled 91,710 votes.

In Farrukhabad, BJP candidate Mukesh Rajput won by a margin of only 2,678 votes over SP candidate Dr Naval Kishor Shakya. The BSP candidate, Kranti Pandey, got 45,390 votes.

The TMC attempt

As part of the INDIA bloc, Mamata Banerjee’s TMC had contested the Bhadohi seat in UP. The SP had allowed TMC the seat in exchange for one from the Congress stable in Madhya Pradesh.

Despite the party never winning any seat ever in UP, the TMC candidate was defeated by the BJP candidate by a margin of only 44,072 votes. While the TMC candidate bagged about 4.2 lakh votes, the BSP candidate got around 1.6 lakh votes.

However, this is mere conjecture and nobody can say with certainty that the votes the BSP received would have gone to the INDIA bloc in its absence.

What Mayawati can still do 

While Mayawati’s vote bank — not only its primary Jatav voters but also the non-Jatav ones — has been on a steady decline in the state, she can still upset some apple carts by eating into their pie, these polls have shown.

Between 2014 and 2024, BSP’s vote share has declined by 10.38 per cent. In 2014, it got 19.77 per cent of the votes, while in 2019, it got 19.42 per cent.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the SP had joined hands with the BSP, they together had won 15 seats. BSP had won 10, while SP had managed only five. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, BSP had not won even a single seat.

In the 2017 UP Assembly elections, BSP got only 19 seats out of the total 403. This was a nosedive from the 80 it scored in the 2012 Assembly elections. In the 2022 Assembly elections, it came down to only one seat, with an abysmal vote percentage of 12.88 per cent.