Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad wants to be UP’s Vijay, plans statewide march to expand base

With eyes on the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections early next year, Lok Sabha MP from Nagina and Aazad Samaj Party chief to hit the road next month and cover all 75 districts

File photos of Tamil Nadu CM C Joseph Vijay and Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad | ANI

Lucknow: Encouraged by the stunning victory of the Joseph Vijay-led Tamilaga Vettri Kazhaga (TVK) victory in the Tamil Nadu assembly elections, Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad is set to launch a ‘Satta Parivartan’ Yatra across Uttar Pradesh from 2 June. Chandrashekhar, who represents Nagina in the Lok Sabha, plans to travel through all 75 districts of Uttar Pradesh in the run-up to assembly elections early next year.

Travelling east to west across Uttar Pradesh, the yatra seeks to energise the party cadre and present the registered but yet unrecognised Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram), or ASP(KR), as a political alternative. The term of the current Uttar Pradesh assembly ends in March next year.

Dalits—Azad’s core voters—constitute 21 percent of the state’s population. This section of the electorate has traditionally supported the Bahujan Samaj Party but that base has steadily eroded over the years. Once a formidable force in Uttar Pradesh politics with its strong social engineering model, the BSP’s share of the vote in the 2022 assembly elections came down to just about 13 percent, a decline by over nine percentage points from the previous polls that translated into a lone seat in the 403-strong House. Other political parties, including the ASP, have been vying for this crucial votebank.

Speaking to mediapersons last week, Chandrashekhar said that new faces have got an opportunity in Tamil Nadu. “If a party formed just two years ago can come to power there, why can’t the Aazad Samaj Party achieve the same in Uttar Pradesh? We just need to put in the strength and effort. One day, power in the state will be ours,” he said.

Chandrashekhar has also indicated that his party is likely to contest the elections independently. Speaking to ThePrint, the ASP chief said, “All these so-called big parties act badly when it comes to seat-sharing in alliances. My experience in the 2022 Assembly polls was not good. That is why I contested independently in 2024 and won, because the people of Nagina were looking for an alternative to the BJP, and I emerged as that alternative. Similarly, people across the state want change. Whoever emerges as a strong alternative will get public support. This yatra will strengthen us at the grassroots level.”

A senior functionary of the party told ThePrint that the yatra will continue till September in different phases. During the campaign, Chandrashekhar will carry out several outreach activities, including padayatras, bike yatras, small chaupals and public interactions from his vehicle. “We are currently finalising the route, and it will be announced in the next few days,” the leader said.

He added that the party is not planning a fixed straight route for the yatra. “It may happen in a zig-zag pattern. For example, one week Chandrashekhar ji may begin the yatra from Mau in Purvanchal and the next week travel to a region in Bundelkhand. This way he will be able to cover all 75 districts,” the functionary said.

Growing out of the 2015-born Bhim Army that fought caste oppression, the Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) was founded in March 2022, and has units in all 75 districts of Uttar Pradesh now. The party has district offices in more than 30 districts, though most of them are rented. Despite the odds, the party has managed to expand its presence beyond its home turf of western Uttar Pradesh.

The party first entered the electoral battleground in the 2022 UP polls but lost deposits on all seats. Chandrashekhar himself contested against Yogi Adityanath from the Gorakhpur Sadar seat. He received only 7,640 votes and also lost his deposit, a shock to the young politician who had been named one of the world’s emerging leaders by Time magazine just the previous year.

The Nagina turnaround

Azad began working actively in Nagina from April 2022, nearly two years before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Speculation that BSP leader Akash Anand would contest from the seat proved to be untrue. The Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance announced its candidate quite late, turning the contest into a direct fight between Azad and BJP candidate Om Kumar.

Result day brought an upset: Azad won Nagina by a huge margin of more than 1.51 lakh votes. After the huge victory, Azad announced plans to field candidates for all Assembly seats in in the 2027 state elections.

Political observers say that the decline of the BSP has helped Azad grow his Dalit support. So precipitous has the BSP’s decline been that it has fallen behind even smaller regional outfits, including the Apna Dal (S), Nishad Party, Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as well, the party failed to open its account, got only 9.88 per cent of the total vote.

There are at least 70 constituencies in Uttar Pradesh where Dalits and Muslims together make up over half the total electorate. According to Professor Kavi Raj, an UP-based political analyst  and faculty member in Lucknow University’s political science department, “The vacuum created by the BSP has helped Chandrashekhar significantly. He remains active on the ground, in the media and on social media. Whenever there is any issue related to atrocities against Dalits, he reaches there quickly, which has helped him create a space in mainstream politics. UP politics is much more complex than Tamil Nadu politics, so comparing TVK and Bhim Army may not be fully correct, but Chandrashekhar has definitely gained strong traction in recent years.”

(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)