‘Winnability, meaningful representation of PDA only criteria for ticket in SP’

Lucknow: Winnability coupled with meaningful representation of PDA – the hallmark of 2024 Lok Sabha poll strategy – is once again at play in Samajwadi Party in shortlisting of candidates for the 2027 assembly polls.

The two factors are dominating the selection of candidates, which has entered its second phase now. In the first phase that concluded about a fortnight ago, candidates were shortlisted for 150 seats spread across 30 districts. The entire screening process is expected to conclude by the second week of July.

There is a lot of curiosity in the political circles on whether SP will once again stick to its traditional Muslim-Yadav domination in fielding of candidates or repeat the 2024 ‘out of the box’ strategy where it went on to field Scheduled Caste candidates on general seats. Party insiders said it was too early to say anything authoritatively as of now because shortlisting of candidates was underway. A clearer picture is likely to emerge once the process of shortlisting of candidates was completed.

The process adopted for selection of candidates is almost the same as that of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The meetings are held district wise and as open house sessions. Ticket seekers along with office bearers of the district unit sit together before the national president and his aides. The candidates spell out their respective roadmap to victory and district unit office-bearers air their assessment on each of them. All this happens face-to-face.

Informed party functionaries claim that a foolproof winnability roadmap complementing the ‘spirit of PDA’ are being seen as the only essential prerequisites of the right candidate. Here the ‘spirit of PDA’ primarily refers to candidates representing the PDA demography.

Unlike the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, where the party kept the winnability quotient of a candidate as the deciding factor, this time the strategists were keen to see a proper representation of castes and communities in ratio of their respective population as far as possible. “This does not mean that winnability will be sacrificed at the altar of candidate’s caste or religion,” clarified a party functionary.

“Winnability is a major factor but not the only one. What is equally important is that the right candidate has to compliment the spirit of PDA as well,” said senior party functionary and former MLC Udaiveer Singh.

“The highpoint in selection of candidates this time too will be the weightage given by office bearers of the district unit to a particular ticket aspirant,” Udaiveer said, adding that party’s national president was personally supervising the candidate selection and his call will be final and binding on all.

In the 403-member state assembly, 84 seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) and 2 for Scheduled Tribes (ST) while the 317 seats are unreserved.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, SP fielded Awadhesh Prasad from Faizabad and Sunita Verma from Meerut – both general seats. While Awadhesh Prasad won, Sunita Verma lost to BJP’s Arun Govil by a slender margin of just over 10,500 votes.