Owaisi–Chandrashekhar alliance in Uttar Pradesh could change the vote arithmetic

Ahead of the next assembly election in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, a new turn has come in the state's politics, amid speculation over a seat-sharing deal between the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress.

All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi and Azad Samaj Party (ASP) chief Chandrashekhar Azad have together formed a new alliance named the Samajik Parivartan Morcha (SPM).

Reactions followed from the opposition camp soon after the alliance was formed. Critics are calling Owaisi the ruling BJP's 'B-team' and describing the new alliance as a strategy to cut into the votes of the SP–Congress-led INDIA bloc.

Western Uttar Pradesh and the Rohilkhand region are seen as the key to power in the state's politics. In the 2007 assembly election, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won 69 seats in this region and formed the government alone. The SP did well there in 2012, and between 2014 and 2017 the BJP established near-total dominance in the region.

Analysis of the 2022 assembly results shows how the presence of a third force can change victory margins. In Moradabad Nagar, the BJP won by only 782 votes, while AIMIM received 2,661 votes.

In Kursi in Barabanki, the BJP won by 520 votes, although the AIMIM candidate received 8,541 votes. In Nakur in Saharanpur, the BJP's winning margin was only 315 votes, while AIMIM received 3,593 votes. In all three seats, Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party was second and the BSP had fallen to third.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, Chandrashekhar Azad won the Nagina seat with 51.19 percent of the vote. In the previous Lok Sabha election the BSP had won that seat with 56.29 percent, but in 2024 Mayawati's party fell to just 1.33 percent there.

In neighbouring Bijnor, by contrast, the BSP retained 21 percent of the vote because Azad did not field a candidate. Similarly, in 2024 neither Owaisi nor Azad fielded candidates in Saharanpur and Moradabad, and Muslim votes went overwhelmingly to the Congress's Imran Masud (44.03 percent) and the SP's Ruchi Vira (49.67 percent).

The BSP won only one seat in the 2022 election, and that sole MLA died at the start of this year. According to political observers, Mayawati has recently been preoccupied with internal and family matters of the party, which has weakened its organisational strength.

The Samajwadi Party's big challenge is retaining the trust of Muslim voters. According to the figures, the SP fielded Muslim candidates in 16 percent of seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, falling to 10 percent in 2019 and to only 4 of 62 candidates in 2024.

Owaisi and Chandrashekhar's Samajik Parivartan Morcha has announced plans to field candidates in all 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh. Analysts say that if it does, the possibility of it eating into the SP's Muslim vote and the BSP's Dalit vote cannot be ruled out.