Western UP: A Potential Surprise In 2024 LS Polls? Know Political Dynamics

New Delhi: The 2024 Lok Sabha Elections are around the corner and the parties across the nation have geared up their preparations to contest the polls. For the general elections in India, it is often said that Uttar Pradesh plays an important role in deciding the fate of the election results as the state with the highest number of Lok Sabha seats in the country.
UP consists of 80 parliamentary constituencies of which 27 fall in the western UP making it one of the most important regions for the parties to contest the election. 

Western UP is a Muslim-dominated area with a sizable population of the community -- Rampur (42 per cent), Amroha (32 per cent), Saharanpur (30 per cent), Bijnor, Nagina and Moradabad (28 per cent each), Muzaffarnagar (27 per cent), Kairana and Meerut (23 per cent each) and Sambhal (22 per cent).

However, Western UP also has a big chunk of Jat voters with 17% population and the region is known as Jat land. The community is known to be the kingmaker since its vote share is known to change the election results' course in Western UP.

BJP's Performance In Western UP

In 2014, BJP won 24 out of 27 Lok Sabha seats however the seats dipped to 19 seats in 2019 as it lost seats to the SP-RLD alliance. To retain its strong position in Western UP, the BJP has already allied with RLD leader Jayant Singh Chaudhary for the 2024 Lok Sabha Polls.

UP BJP minority morcha's president Kunwar Basit Ali told PTI that in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP got about 10 per cent votes of the Muslim community. This time the target is to increase it to 15 per cent, especially the Pasmanda Muslims, who are being linked to the BJP and who have benefited the most from the government schemes.
As far as the candidates declared by various political parties are concerned, the BJP has not given ticket to even a single Muslim this time in western UP while the SP and BSP have fielded several Muslims.

Challenge For SP To Harness Muslim Votes In Western UP

SP's alliance with Congress for the 2024 Polls has changed the political equation for the party in the region and it will be a big challenge for the alliance to prevent the scattering of Muslim votes because its victory on many Muslim-dominated seats can be possible only if the Muslim votes are united in its favour.

Political analyst Parvez Ahmed believes that this time the biggest challenge for the Samajwadi Party is to keep the Muslim voters united in its favour. A major reason for this is that since 2019, the SP has not been as vocal on Muslim-related issues as was expected from it. One thing is also that BSP has fielded Muslim candidates on every seat, where the Dalit voters are in good numbers after the Muslims.