The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) organised a grand induction programme on July 24 in which it announced the names of 18 bigwigs from opposition parties in order to expand its vote base in politically crucial Uttar Pradesh, which sends 80 MPs to Lok Sabha.
In politics, every move is backed by a reason and the saffron party’s mass induction has raised eyebrows. Political pundits in UP are calling it a part of BJP’s game plan ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election to woo Other Backward Caste (OBC) and Scheduled Caste (SC) voters who constitute the largest bloc in the state.
The trend started on July 17 when Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief Om Prakash Rajbhar announced his party’s decision to join the BJP-led NDA. The development came a day after Rajbhar met Union Home Minister and poll strategist Amit Shah in New Delhi — months after he broke ties with Samajwadi Party with which it contested UP assembly polls and managed to win six seats. Rajbhar himself had won from Zahoorabad assembly seat in Ghazipur district.
Soon after, former UP MLA Dara Singh Chauhan switched sides to join the BJP from the SP. Within days, BJP struck again and announced the induction of around 18 bigwigs from different political parties, including 11 from rival SP, five from Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), one from Congress and one from Rashtriya Lok Dal. These ‘special 18’ include two ex-MPs and two former SP ministers.
Most importantly, it includes Shalini Yadav who had contested against Prime Minister Narendra Modi from SP in the 2019 general elections. In her first parliamentary election, Yadav had contested for the Varanasi seat against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and was defeated by a margin of over 4.75 lakh votes. She had joined the Samajwadi Party in 2019.
UP’s political analysts described these frequent inductions as BJP’s game plan to increase its OBC and SC vote base in UP, especially east UP where the groups often play a deciding role.
“Since Rajbhar was the first to switch sides, let’s start with Rajbhar. With a sizeable chunk of population in East UP districts belonging to OBC and SC, the Rajbhar community often plays a deciding factor for candidates contesting from around two dozen Lok Sabha Seats. Undoubtedly, Rajbhar’s induction will help BJP bolster its hold on non-Yadav OBCs,” said Shashikant Pandey, HoD, department of political science, at Lucknow’s Bhimrao Ambedkar University.
Pandey added that the list of the new joinees included six OBC leaders and three SC leaders. Satyapal Yadav, Sunita Yadav, Sahab Singh Saini, Rajpal Saini and Sushma Patel are from the OBC category whereas Anshul Verma, Jagdish Sonkar and Gulab Saroj are from the Schedule Caste (SC) category.
Among the OBCs, Rajpal Saini started his career with BSP, was elected MLA in 2002 and sent to Rajya Sabha in 2010. However, Saini later joined RLD and was posted as national president of Samajik Nyay Manch. Sahab Singh Saini was a two-time SP MLA and former minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government. He joined BJP and formed the Rashtriya Krantikari Morcha in 2022 in Uttarakhand before returning to active politics in UP’s Saharanpur. Sushma Patel started her career with BSP and was elected MLA from Mungra Badshahpur seat in Jaunpur district in 2017. She joined SP in 2022.
Sonkar, meanwhile, was denied a ticket by the SP for the 2022 UP elections, leading to protests and resignations from his loyalists. He had earlier won the Shahganj assembly seat twice in 2002 and 2007, and later went on to win the Machhlishahr constituency in 2012 and 2017.
Verma, a BJP member till 2019, had made news for handing over his resignation to a security guard deployed at the BJP’s Lucknow office. He joined SP ahead of the general elections that year after being denied a ticket by the BJP for the same. Verma had in 2014 won the Lok Sabha election for the BJP from Hardoi seat.
SK Dwivedi, professor and former HoD of political science at the University of Lucknow, said BJP’s performance in six seats — Ambedkarnagar, Azamgarh, Ghazipur, Ghosi, Lalganj and Jaunpur — was not satisfactory in 2019. In Azamgarh, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav bagged the seat, defeating BJP’s Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ with a sizeable margin of 2,59,874 votes. In other seats, BJP candidates suffered a massive defeat from Bahujan Samaj Party candidates.
“However, the mass induction of opposition leaders, especially the ones belonging to the OBC and SC category will certainly benefit BJP in the coming Lok Sabha Polls,” he added.
