Cross-voting SP MLAs bring to the fore ‘upper caste’ challenge for party

The Samajwadi Party (SP) was left embarrassed Tuesday after seven of its MLAs cross-voted in the Rajya Sabha polls, leading to the loss of one of its candidates.

Now, a bigger problem confronts the party as five of the seven legislators who are believed to have cross-voted and appeared in photographs with the BJP on Tuesday belong to upper castes, and insiders concede that this may hit the party hard ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

Incidentally, two of these five represent Assembly segments which are contiguous with the parliamentary constituencies of Amethi and Raebareli, the two seats on which most of the hopes of SP ally Congress ride in UP.

The apparent defection of five SP upper caste leaders comes at a time when Akhilesh is in the cross hairs of many of them for reiterating constantly his party’s outreach towards what he has deemed the “PDA” – Pichde (backward), Dalits and Alpsankhyak (minorities) – since June last year. A section of upper caste SP leaders had earlier expressed apprehensions that the PDA could send an exclusionary message to the tribals and upper castes.

Following the “backlash”, Akhilesh had clarified that the A in PDA also included agde (forward castes), adivasi (tribals) and aadhi abaadi (women).

Of the suspected cross-voters, Manoj Pandey, Rakesh Pandey and Vinod Chaturvedi are Brahmins, Rakesh Pratap Singh and Abhay Singh are Thakurs. Puja Pal belongs to the OBC category while Ashutosh Maurya is a Dalit.

The biggest embarrassment for the SP came from its chief whip and Unchahar MLA Manoj Pandey, who resigned from the post minutes before the election on Tuesday. Seen as a Brahmin face of the party, he was the first SP leader to “disagree” with then SP leader Swami Prasad Maurya’s “objectionable”