Nine seats in Uttar Pradesh have upcoming by-elections, with BSP leader Mayawati accusing BJP and SP of colluding before the elections. She said that she has been unable to sleep since her party nominated candidates for nine assembly seats in the upcoming by-elections on November 20 in the state.
In the 2022 UP assembly elections, the SP won four of the nine seats, the BJP won three, and the RLD and Nishad Party each secured one seat. Out of these seats, the BSP had come in second place on one seat, which was the Khair seat reserved for the Scheduled Caste (SC) in Aligarh district, and in third place on seven seats, including Katehari, Phulpur, Mirapur, Karhal, Kundarki, Ghaziabad, and Majhawan.
In Khair, the BSP candidate received 26% of the votes, coming in second to the BJP candidate who won by a margin of more than 74,000 votes. The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), previously aligned with the SP, secured the third position in the constituency with 16.57% votes. However, in a different political landscape, the RLD is now associated with the BJP-led NDA.
In Katehari, the BSP received 58,482 votes (23.62% of the total) and won against BJP ally Nishad Party by a margin of 7,696 votes. All three main competitors for the upcoming by-elections – BJP, SP, and BSP – have nominated OBC candidates in the constituency.
In the Phulpur seat, which is dominated by the OBC community, BJP won against SP by 2,732 votes, with BSP coming in third with 33,036 votes (13.4% votes).
In Majhawan, the Nishad Party emerged victorious over the SP by a margin of 33,587 votes, with the BSP receiving 52,990 votes. In the upcoming by-election, the BJP and the SP have nominated OBC candidates for this seat, while the BSP has nominated a Brahmin candidate.
During the 2022 elections, RLD emerged victorious in Meerapur by outperforming BJP with a margin of 27,380 votes, as BSP secured third place with 23,797 votes (11% of total votes). Both BSP and SP have nominated Muslim candidates for this seat in the by-election.
Akhilesh Yadav of the SP criticized BJP while SP Singh Baghel received over 67,000 votes. BSP emerged victorious in the Karhal constituency by defeating BJP with a narrow margin of 50 votes. K Kuldeep Narayan received 6.37% of the votes and came in third place in the by-election. BSP has nominated its OBC leader Avnish Kumar Shakya for the election. Shakya Yadavs are the second most powerful group in Karhal, following the dominant OBC community. SP has established a coalition government with Akhilesh, whereas BJP has also nominated a Yadav candidate.
SP emerged victorious in the Kundakari seat of Moradabad district, which is predominantly Muslim, by outvoting the BJP with a margin of 43,162 votes. BSP secured the third position with 42,742 votes, equivalent to 15.73% of the total votes. BSP has nominated a candidate belonging to the Muslim community for this constituency.
BJP won over SP by a margin of 1.05 lakh votes in Ghaziabad, with BSP coming in third with 13.36% of the votes. The BSP ended up in fourth place in the Sisamau seat in Kanpur in 2022, with the SP defeating the BJP by 12,266 votes to win. The BSP received only 2,937 votes, representing 1.88% of the total vote share. The Congress, running independently in the state assembly elections, placed third in Sisamau with a total of 5,616 votes. The Congress has declared its support for the SP in all nine constituencies during the current by-elections as it did not secure the seats it wanted.
Sources suggest that although Mayawati and her nephew, BSP national coordinator Akash Anand, are included as star campaigners for the by-elections, they are unlikely to participate in the campaign.
In a statement released on Saturday, Mayawati urged voters to back her party in the upcoming by-elections. Her decision to field BSP candidates is likely intended to create a three-way competition on the nine seats, positioning her party as a viable opponent to both the BJP and the SP. She has alleged that the BJP and the SP are running in the elections together by mutual agreement.
The BSP’s standing in UP has worsened in recent years. In the 2022 assembly elections, the party secured just one seat out of 403, experiencing a decrease in its vote share from 22.23% in the 2017 elections (where it won 19 seats) to 12.88%.
During the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BSP will not secure any seats in UP despite participating in 79 out of 80 constituencies, and its percentage of votes will decrease by 10 to 9.39%.