New Delhi: As the 2024 general elections became a fight between the NDA and the INDIA bloc with coalition politics regaining significance, the results also showed a sharp decline in the fortune of non-aligned parties.
Parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) in Telangana, Biju Janata Dal in Odisha and YSR Congress Party in Andhra Pradesh, which were not a part of either of the two blocs, suffered major setbacks.
The Bahujan Samaj Party fielded 488 candidates across the country, the highest number of candidates to be fielded by a party, even surpassing the BJP’s 441 candidates. However, it drew a blank and got around 2.05 per cent votes.
In 2019, the BSP won 10 seats, with a vote share of 3.62 per cent. In Odisha, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) was limited to only one seat in LS. The party had 12 MPs in Odisha in 2019 out of the total 21 seats.
Its vote share in 2024 was 1.44 per cent, slightly down from the 1.66 per cent vote share it had in the 2019 LS polls. In Andhra Pradesh, where the BJP allied with the Telugu Desam Party and Jana Sena, the YSR Congress Party was leading on four seats, significantly down from 22 seats in the 2019 polls. It polled around 2.06 percent, down from the 2.53 per cent vote share it had last time.
In neighbouring Telangana, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) was not leading even on a single seat. The party had won nine seats in LS in 2019, with a vote share of 1.25 per cent. This time, the vote share of the BRS was
0.57 percent.