Opinion Samajwadi Party needs more than organisational changes to revive its fortunes in UP. The task is political

The Samajwadi Party could not retain the Leader of Opposition post in the UP Legislative Council on Thursday after its seat tally fell to less than 10 per cent of the strength of the Upper House. The party has been steadily losing ground to the BJP in the state since the 2014 general election. It has lost three elections since — assembly polls in 2017 and 2022 as well as the 2019 general election — even as it has emerged as the clear challenger in what appears to have become a bi-polar contest. Last week, the SP dissolved its national, state, and district executive bodies, and various front organisations. The shock defeats to BJP candidates in its strongholds, Rampur and Azamgarh, in the recent Lok Sabha bypolls may have forced the party’s hand: The SP lost Rampur in a straight contest while the BJP benefited from a multi-cornered contest in Azamgarh, a seat won by party chief Akhilesh Yadav in 2019.

The crisis in the SP goes well beyond organisational issues and it will need to be addressed more fundamentally. It has found it difficult to shake off its political opponents’ attack particularly on two counts — one, patronising candidates with criminal records and two, leaning on two communities, Yadavs and Muslims, and one family, the Mulayam parivar. When Akhilesh Yadav took charge of the SP, he promised to modernise it by burying old socialist fads such as opposition to computers and English. He also seemed keen to give the party a more youthful profile. During his tenure in government, 2012-17, he built expressways and initiated the Lucknow metro, but could not fend off the BJP’s allegations, especially on the law and order front. In recent times, Akhilesh has avoided sharing the stage with his family members in election campaigns and rallies and yet found it difficult to dispel the impression of the SP being one family’s party.

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The problem is not just that the new party seems too much like the old. It is, also, that the new SP has not kept the best traditions of the old SP. Mulayam Singh was trained in the Lohia school of agitational politics and worked his way up while Akhilesh, his son, was directly anointed as heir to high office and the party. Akhilesh’s reluctance to hit the streets may stem from a lack of schooling in mobilisational politics. The SP has raced ahead of all Opposition parties in UP, but it will require more than cosmetic organisational changes to catch up with the BJP.