Samajwadi Party

Samajwadi Party (SP), regional political party in India based in Uttar Pradesh state. The SP was formed in 1992 in Lucknow, and it professes a socialist ideology. Influenced by the veteran socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia (1910–67), the party aimed at “creating a socialist society, which works on the principle of equality,” and sought to mobilize the state’s minority Muslim population and members of lower castes (notably those officially classified as Other Backward Classes) into a political force. Mulayam Singh Yadav was the party’s founder and longtime president. The SP grew to become one of the largest regional parties in India—forming governments in Uttar Pradesh in 1993, 2003, and 2012—and since its inception it maintained a small but influential number of seats in the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament).

The SP traces its origins to when Yadav split off from a faction of the Janata Dal (“People’s Party”) in October 1992. The party’s political fortunes have undergone several peaks and valleys. In December 1993, about a year after it had been established, the party formed a coalition government in Uttar Pradesh with the outside support of the pro-Dalit (pro-untouchable) Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Yadav became the champion of the state’s Muslim population when he supported them following the destruction in December 1992 of the controversial Babri Masjid (“Mosque of Bābur”) in Ayodhya by Hindu right-wing activists. In 1993 Muslims voted heavily for SP candidates, who won 109 of the 422 seats in the lower chamber of the state legislature. The Yadav government lasted for only 18 months, dissolving after the BSP withdrew its support. In the 1996 assembly elections, the SP won 110 seats and functioned as an opposition party under a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government.

In the 2002 state assembly elections, the SP upped its total to 143 seats. After the coalition government formed by BSP and BJP collapsed in 2003, the SP formed a government with the support of smaller parties, independent candidates, and rebel legislators who had left the BSP. However, the SP suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the BSP in the 2007 elections, barely managing to win 97 seats, as the BSP won an outright majority of 206 seats and formed a government.

The SP’s electoral success remained mostly confined to Uttar Pradesh, although the party did win a handful of seats in the 2003 assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh state. Its presence at the national level remained modest. It reached a high point in the 2004 legislative elections, when it won 36 seats in the Lok Sabha. During the run-up to the 2009 national parliamentary elections, the party opposed the use of English and the use of computers in schools. It is unclear how much those positions affected the polling, but the SP dropped its total in the Lok Sabha to 23 seats. It did, however, begin extending external support to the ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition led by the Indian National Congress (Congress Party).

Anticipating the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls in early 2012, the SP underwent a makeover and a generation change, spearheaded by Yadav’s son, Akhilesh Yadav. In addition to bringing a number of young professionals into the party, the policy changes he instituted included promising a ban on state land acquisition, announcing incentives for the agricultural sector (including extending loans to farmers at low interest rates), and (in a turnaround from 2009) promising laptop and tablet computers to students who had completed the school-leaving examination. The result was a major SP landslide, aided by allegations of corruption against the BSP and its leader, Kumari Mayawati. The party won 224 seats and formed the government. Although the elder Yadav retained leadership of the party, he stepped aside to allow Akhilesh to be named the state’s chief minister. Mulayam Singh Yadav was reelected in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, but the results for the SP were disastrous: the party was able to win only five seats.