Road To 2024: INDIA alliance disarray in UP and Gujarat gives BJP a 100-seat head-start

BJP believes it has a clear head-start of 100 Lok Sabha seats in 2024 in its chase of the majority mark of 272 seats. (Image source: Reuters/File)

The INDIA alliance plans to stop Narendra Modi’s victory chariot in 2024 with strategic seat-sharing in states. But there seems to be no plan in place to stop the BJP in the two key states of Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, which the ruling party believes to be a head-start of 100 seats.

Uttar Pradesh sends the largest number of 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha and Gujarat sends 26. Earlier this week, the statement of Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav – that he has a strategy to take on the BJP on all 80 seats of UP – should ring alarm bells in the INDIA camp as the alliance already seems a no-starter in UP.

On Thursday, Akhilesh Yadav made it even more clear that a deal in UP with the Congress in 2024 could be off, given that the latter had not given even a single seat to the SP in Madhya Pradesh. Congress put up a candidate even on the one seat that SP had won in 2018.

Easing BJP’s UP, Gujarat Battles

Yadav’s statements have evidently come in response to the Congress refusing to accommodate SP in a respectable manner in the upcoming MP elections. With the BSP already out of the INDIA alliance, an SP-Congress breakup may mean the road being paved for a BJP sweep in UP.

In the PM’s home state of Gujarat, the BJP has swept all 26 seats both in the 2019 and 2014 polls and the Congress remains in a moribund state there. This is despite BJP dropping Vijay Rupani and in fact the entire state Cabinet before the assembly elections in the state last year, and still sweeping the state polls.

The AAP made an entry into Gujarat in the 2022 assembly polls by winning five seats and a 13 percent vote share but the Congress (which dropped to a vote share of just 27 percent) seems in no mood to have any truck with AAP for the Lok Sabha battle in Gujarat. BJP hence seems to be in pole position to complete a hat-trick of 26 seats.

Why Uttar Pradesh Is Key

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly said that his full-majority governments in 2014 and 2019 were thanks to Uttar Pradesh. The BJP alliance won 73 seats out of 80 in the state in 2014, and 64 seats in 2019.

The drop in 2019 was due to the SP-BSP-RLD alliance under which the BSP won ten seats and the SP won five seats. But since then, the opposition alliance has broken with the BSP walking out of the same and the RLD remaining as the only partner of SP. The Congress won just one seat, Rae Bareilly, in 2019 and lost Rahul Gandhi’s seat of Amethi.

In the subsequent assembly elections in UP in 2022, BJP romped home again despite the SP-RLD alliance and the BSP was demolished. Mayawati now is a shadow of her past as a CM.

What the INDIA alliance lacks is a coherent strategy to stop the BJP in UP. Akhilesh Yadav is upbeat since winning a bypoll in the Ghosi assembly seat last month but seems to have conveniently forgotten the embarrassing by-poll defeats that SP suffered in its bastion Lok Sabha seats of Azamgarh and Rampur last year.

Can BJP Better 2014 UP Tally?

In fact a top BJP leader from the state recently claimed to this correspondent that the BJP is in a good position in 2024 to even beat its record of 73 out of 80 seats in UP that it won in 2014. “There are only a couple of seats which are tough for the BJP to win in UP currently – these are Mainpuri and Rae Bareilly. BJP can win every other seat in the state,” the leader said.

What works for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh is also the added popularity of CM Yogi Adityanath, apart from that of PM Narendra Modi. SP insiders are circumspect of the prospects of returns in the event of an alliance with the Congress in UP, as they cite the alliance that both parties drew up in the state election of 2017 faced a disastrous defeat.

Congress then fought over 100 out of the 400-odd seats in the state and could win just half-a-dozen of them. SP feels Congress asks for far more number of seats than they deserve and that the grand old party is still stuck in the delusion of 2009 when it had won 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

In short, the BJP believes it has a clear head-start of 100 Lok Sabha seats in 2024 in its chase of the majority mark of 272 seats. The opposition first needs to find a UP and Gujarat plan if it intends to stop the Modi-led BJP from achieving a hat-trick of Lok Sabha wins.