In tough Uttar Pradesh race, why SP, Congress will keep eye on tie-up of Owaisi, Apna Dal faction

The new alliance, named the ‘PDM Nyay Morcha’, claims to represent “Pichhde, Dalit, and Musalman”, hence posing a direct competition to the SP’s PDA (Pichchde, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) pitch. On paper, this has the potential to dent the SP’s Muslim-Yadav vote bank.

The SP was also the target of AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi and Apna Dal (K) leader Pallavi Patel’s speeches at the PDM launch. “In the last Assembly elections in UP, 90% Muslims voted for the SP, but what was the result?… No one wants leadership of the Muslim community. They only ask for their votes,” Owaisi said.

Patel accused the SP of being two-faced over its PDA claims as well, with the Apna Dal (K) alleging that SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had not lived up to his promise of prioritising the backwards.

For the INDIA bloc, the emergence of the PDM front comes on the back of the loss of the RLD to the NDA.

Vote shares in Assembly polls

The results for the two Assembly elections in which the AIMIM has participated show a minimum presence for the Hyderabad-based party in UP. The Apna Dal (K), which is an offshoot of the Apna Dal (S) that is an NDA ally, performed even worse in 2022, the first election that it fought.

In 2017, its first Assembly election in UP, the AIMIM contested 38 seats but won none, getting just 0.24% of the overall vote share. In 2022, it put up candidates in as many as 95 seats. It again lost all, with just a marginal improvement in its vote share, to 0.49%.

However, in May 2023, the AIMIM put up a better showing in urban local body elections – five of its candidates were elected as Nagar Palika Parishad or Nagar Panchayat chairpersons, and 75 to municipal corporations. While it lost the Meerut mayoral candidate race to the BJP, it ended up ahead of the SP.

As far as Lok Sabha polls go, the AIMIM is an untested party in UP. In 2019, it contested only one seat in North India – in Bihar – and finished third.

The Apna Dal, meanwhile, was founded by Soneylal Patel in 1995 as a splinter group from the BSP. In 2016, the party split again – Apna Dal (Kamerawadi), led by Soneylal’s eldest daughter and sitting MLA Pallavi, and Apna Dal (Soneylal), led by Pallavi’s younger sister and two-time MP Anupriya. Until 2014, the Apna Dal had failed to win a single Lok Sabha seat. But an alliance with the BJP in 2014 helped the united party win two parliamentary seats.

After the split, Anupriya’s faction emerged as the more dominant party – in 2019, it again won two Lok Sabha seats. The Apna Dal (K), however, did not contest in 2019.

In recent Assembly polls, too, Pallavi’s faction has struggled while Anupriya’s party has managed to carve out space for itself in the NDA. In 2017, while the Apna Dal (S) won 9 of the 11 seats it contested, the Apna Dal (K) failed to win either of the two seats it contested and registered a near zero vote share. In 2022, the Apna Dal (K) lost all the six seats it contested and managed just 0.28% votes. In those six seats, however, it secured 18.82% of the vote share.

While both in the 2017 and 2022 Assembly polls, the combined votes of the AIMIM and Apna Dal (K) would not have resulted in any wins, in 2017, their votes exceeded the winning margin in six Assembly seats. The BJP won four of these six seats, suggesting a potential vote cutting impact of the AIMIM-Apna Dal (K) alliance.

In 2022, the two parties got enough votes to outnumber the winning margin in as many as 19 Assembly seats. Of these seats, the BJP and its allies won 10 and the SP 9.

Projecting these results to Lok Sabha seats, the AIMIM and Apna Dal (K) show up only as marginal players, partially owing to the relatively small number of seats they contested and the handful of votes they secured.

In 2017, AIMIM secured 5% of the vote share across all the Assembly segments that make up the Sambhal Lok Sabha seat. In every other seat, the two parties had a negligible presence.

In 2022, the parties registered a notable vote share in the Assembly segments of just four Lok Sabha seats – the AIMIM’s 3.4% in Azamgarh, and Apna Dal (K)’s 5.5% in Mirzapur, 6.6% in Pratapgarh and 6.3% in Varanasi.