The Congress fears that competitors with the SP to woo the OBCs (who make up 40-45 per cent of UP’s citizens) and the Muslims (who represent 19.5 per cent of the state’s inhabitants) may fit to the BJP’s benefit because the saffron celebration has made important inroads into non-Yadav OBC teams utilizing Hindutva, hyper-nationalism, and ‘beneficiary’ politics together with micro social administration and caste-based political outfits such because the Apna Dal or the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party. The saffron celebration has additionally wooed a piece of Pasmanda Muslims together with girls by measures such because the abolishment of triple talaq.

Congress’ technique makers are confronted with the dilemma to decide on between SP chief Akhilesh Yadav

Or BSP chief Mayawati, who has determined to struggle the 2024 polls alone after the SP-BSP ‘mahagathbandhan’ did not make any influence within the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in UP; the BJP and its ally Apna Dal(S) received 64 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats, demolishing the SP-BSP alliance to fifteen seats between themselves.  

The BJP received an unprecedented 49.6 per cent vote share, whereas the SP managed to win 18.11 per cent, and the BSP 19.4 per cent.

All the eyes are on BSP’s new inheritor obvious, Akash Anand on whether or not he can have a rethink on Mayawati’s plan to struggle the final elections alone. At a time when a big chunk of the Dalits, notably non-Jatavs, have moved to the BJP because of Mayawati’s political inactivity making a vacuum in Dalit politics and disillusionment locally, the problem for Anand is to win again younger Dalits who’re in search of different political alternate options by launching an aggressive Bahujan mobilisation.

The BSP’s vote share has dipped persistently in UP. The celebration acquired 22.24 per cent of the votes within the 2017 meeting elections, however its vote share dipped to 12.81 per cent in 2022. In its worst efficiency, the BSP bagged just one seat in an meeting of 403 seats within the 2022 elections. 

It’s robust for the Congress now that Akhilesh Yadav has already introduced to contest elections from 65 Lok Sabha seats, leaving simply 25 seats for I.N.D.I.A. companions, and Mayawati has declared to go alone.

‘Perform or perish’ or the worry of the BJP are the 2 components which can be uniting anti-BJP political events within the I.N.D.I.A alliance, which is inherently contradictory, and wherein allies are contesting amongst themselves for a similar social base within the Hindi Heartland.

(Mahendra Kumar Singh is a political commentator and teaches Political Science at DDU Gorakhpur University, Uttar Pradesh. X: @MKSinghGkp)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the writer’s personal. They don’t essentially replicate the views of DH.