SP'S BROKEN RAMPARTS

It's the kind of bitter blow the Samajwadi Party would hardly have counted as a possibility.

- Prashant Srivastava

 In a major setback, the Akhilesh Yadav-led party lost its bastions of Rampur and Azamgarh to the Bharatiya Janata Party on June 26 in byelections to both the Lok Sabha seats. The loss is significant, as the Azamgarh and Rampur seats were vacated by senior SP leader Azam Khan and Akhilesh himself after they won in the assembly polls in March.

BJP candidates Dinesh Lal Yadav 'Nirahua' (Azamgarh) and Ghanshyam Singh Lodhi (Rampur) defeated SP candidates Dharmendra Yadav and Asim Raja by margins of 8,679 and 42,192 votes, respectively. With these two seats gone, the SP has just three MPs in the Lok Sabha-an all-time low.

This loss also shows that the SP, the main opposition party in Uttar Pradesh, has been losing its hold over Muslims and Yadavs-their much-vaunted 'M-Y' support base. Muslims comprise over 40 per cent of the population in Rampur, while Muslims and Yadavs comprise above 30 per cent of the population in Azamgarh. Although SP leaders attributed the defeat to the "misuse of official machinery", a major section in the party are calling for a change in strategy. Some party functionaries are also raising questions about the absence of Akhilesh on the ground.

Indeed, the SP chief did not address a single public meeting and there is no clarity on why he stayed away in such crucial by-elections. Says a senior SP leader, "The absence of Akhileshji from the campaign is one of the reasons behind the loss. If he had campaigned, the results would have been different. Dimpleji (Akhilesh's wife) also didn't campaign."