Rajbhar, a minister in the Uttar Pradesh government and chief of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, said on Wednesday that major political changes were taking shape inside the Samajwadi Party. He suggested that several leaders were uneasy with the party’s direction and could drift towards the Bharatiya Janata Party as the state moves closer to another high-stakes electoral cycle.
The assertion has triggered a fresh round of political sparring in a state that sends 80 members to the Lok Sabha and remains central to national coalition arithmetic. Uttar Pradesh’s next assembly election, due in 2027, is already being framed as a test of whether the BJP can recover from the setback it faced in the 2024 parliamentary contest, when the Samajwadi Party emerged as the largest party in the state’s Lok Sabha tally.
Rajbhar’s comments drew a swift response from Akhilesh Yadav, who rejected speculation of a rupture within his party and accused the BJP camp of trying to engineer defections through pressure and inducement. The Samajwadi Party chief said his organisation remained prepared for the next election and sought to turn the attack back on the ruling side by portraying it as nervous after the opposition’s 2024 performance.
The exchange reflects the growing importance of narrative-building before formal campaign lines are drawn. Rajbhar’s remarks are politically significant because his party was once allied with the Samajwadi Party during the 2022 assembly election before returning to the BJP-led alliance in 2023. His standing among sections of the Rajbhar and non-Yadav backward-class electorate gives his interventions added weight in eastern Uttar Pradesh, where caste alignments often influence margins in tightly fought seats.
The Samajwadi Party won 111 seats in the 403-member assembly in 2022, a sharp rise from its 2017 performance but far short of power. The BJP won 255 seats, while its allies helped secure a comfortable ruling majority. The SBSP, then aligned with the Samajwadi Party bloc, won six seats. Those numbers continue to shape the calculations of both camps, particularly in constituencies where small caste-based parties can tilt outcomes.
The political backdrop changed after the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The Samajwadi Party won 37 seats in Uttar Pradesh, while the BJP’s tally fell to 33. The Congress, fighting in alliance with the Samajwadi Party, won six seats. The result disrupted the BJP’s earlier dominance in the state and gave Akhilesh Yadav’s PDA pitch — centred on backward classes, Dalits and minorities — greater traction ahead of the assembly contest.
That shift has made opposition unity and internal discipline crucial for the Samajwadi Party. Any credible defection narrative could weaken its bargaining power with allies and create doubts among voters in constituencies where the party is trying to consolidate social groups beyond its traditional Yadav-Muslim base. For the BJP, keeping attention on alleged strains within the opposition allows it to counter the perception that the 2024 result marked a lasting political realignment.
Rajbhar has also used sharp language to suggest that the Samajwadi Party leadership should protect its MPs and legislators from drifting away. His comments appear designed to frame the opposition as vulnerable at a time when the ruling alliance is expected to intensify constituency-level work, particularly in areas where it lost ground in the parliamentary election.
Samajwadi Party leaders have pushed back by arguing that the split talk is unsupported by visible organisational movement. Party MPs have publicly rejected claims of factional rebellion and maintained that the organisation remains united behind Akhilesh Yadav. The leadership is also seeking to keep its focus on unemployment, inflation, farm distress, social justice and alleged misuse of institutions, themes that helped it make gains in 2024.
