Akhilesh Yadav And Rahul Gandhi: Brothers In Arms

The Samajwadi-Congress pre-election tie-up is proving to be a gamechanger, with rivals BJP and BSP playing catch-up.

- Ajit Kumar Jha

Barely a month ago, the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections seemed like a cakewalk for the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was riding high after its ‘strong’ response to the Uri attack in September and the avowedly ‘pro-poor’ move to demonetise currency in November. The Samajwadi Party, in contrast, appeared on the verge of a split, with the young UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav embroiled in a battle with his uncle Shivpal Yadav and father Mulayam Singh Yadav. The Congress seemed clueless after Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi’s khat sabha came to an abrupt end.

Then came the SP-Congress alliance in January, and the electoral wind changed direction completely. A classic game changer, the alliance began dictating the campaign, with the BSP and BJP reduced to playing catch-up and scrambling for ways to counter the alliance.

Polls in UP have for a long time now been four-cornered contests, which this pre-poll alliance has altered. In the past, parties would win polls with less than 30 per cent of the vote. The SP, for example, swept UP in 2012, winning 224 of the 403 seats, with only 29 per cent of the votes, just three percentage points more than the runner-up, Bahujan Samaj Party. In 2017, the minimum threshold would end up being over a third of the total vote, in the range of 35 per cent, for any party or combine to get a majority. The alliance has a higher chance of reaching that threshold than any individual party, unless there is a strong wave in its favour. And given that the fervour for Modi is not as strong as it was in 2014, it will possibly work to the alliance’s advantage in 2017.

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