Lok Sabha bypoll: Why Samajwadi Party lost the Azamgarh seat

The Lok Sabha bypoll result on June 26 threw some surprising results. The Samajwadi Party (SP) lost two strong bastions Rampur and Azamgarh to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In Rampur, BJP’s Ghanshyam Singh Lodhi triumphed over SP’s Mohammad Asim Raja by a margin of more than 42,000 votes. The seat was a stronghold of former MP Mohammad Azam Khan, who is a prominent leader of SP. He had vacated the seat once he won the assembly election in 2022. 

But it was the Azamgarh district which delivered the biggest blow to the SP. Akhilesh Yadav’s cousin Dharmendra Yadav lost the contest to BJP’s Dinesh Lal Yadav, also known as Nirahua, by a margin of 8,679 votes. Dharmendra Yadav got 3,04,089 votes while Nirahua got 3,12,768 votes.

Akhilesh had won the seat with a thumping majority in 2019, but vacated it after he won the UP assembly election from the Karhal constituency in Mainpuri in 2022.
In 2019, Nirahua had contested against Akhilesh but had lost by over 3 lakh votes.

This time the BJP pitched Dinesh Yadav again against Akhilesh’s cousin and former MP Dharmendra Yadav. 

But how did the SP lose oi a stronghold like Azamgarh?

Here are three reasons for it:

1. BSP PLAYED SPOILSPORT: The biggest reason for SP's loss in Azamgarh was BSP’s candidate Shah Alam, also known as Guddu Jamali. Jamali received 2,66,106 votes pulling 29.27% of the votes. The BSP played the Dalit-Muslim gamble here which though worked well for BSP, it dampened the prospects of the SP. BSP got large number of Muslim and Dalit votes this time.

In 2019, BSP’s vote got transferred to Akhilesh as the two parties were contesting in alliance. But this time by fielding a Muslim candidate, BSP made it a three-sided contest which gave the benefit to the BJP.

2. ABSENCE OF AKHILESH: SP did have leaders like Om Prakash Rajbhar and Mau MLA Abbas Ansari campaigning for Dharmendra Yadav, but party supremo Akhilesh stayed away from the campaign. Akhilesh didn’t campaign for his cousin, leaving it to party workers and other leaders.

For the BJP, CM Yogi Adityanath and Gorakhpur MP Ravi Kishan campaigned extensively for Nirahua. The result was that SP’s vote share plummeted to 33.44% from 60.36%.

3.SPLIT IN YADAV VOTE:  While the minority vote got divided between BSP and SP, the Yadav vote also got divided as BJP’s candidate also belonged to the Yadav community. Dinesh Yadav, having lost the seat in 2019, didn’t leave the ground and stayed connected with Azamgarh. In the 2022 assembly polls also the Bhojpuri star campaigned for the BJP, though party lost all the 5 seats in the region. 

But the party aware of the mathematics this time, knew it can clinch the seat from SP’s hold. And it did.

For SP, it is the time to retrospect now.