The betrayal of eight Samajwadi Party legislators during the Rajya Sabha elections that allowed the Bharatiya Janata Party to sail through with eight of the 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh could spell bad news for its ally Congress in the coming Lok Sabha elections. On a day that had all the makings of a political potboiler, the Akhilesh Yadav-led party suffered a series of setbacks, beginning with the resignation of Manoj Kumar Pandey from the post of the chief whip of the SP in the UP Assembly.

Seen as a trusted aide of Akhilesh Yadav, Pandey met Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday amid strong indications that he may shift loyalties to the BJP as early as this week. Pandey’s rebellion has come as a major setback for Akhilesh – both politically and on a personal level. A three-time MLA, Pandey had Akhilesh’s backing even during a row over former party leader Swami Prasad Maurya.

Pandey’s imminent exit from the Samajwadi Party, however, offers an opportunity to the BJP to gain an upper hand over the Congress in its longheld bastion in Uttar Pradesh. Pandey is the sitting MLA from Uchahar Assembly seat, a constituency that falls under the Raebareli Lok Sabha constituency that Congress parliamentary party chairperson Sonia Gandhi recently vacated for a seat in the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan.

With expections that the Congress would field either Rahul Gandhi or Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from the seat that it has lost only thrice since 1951, the developments on Tuesday during the Lok Sabha elections suggest that the BJP may have found its answer to the Raebareli question. While the BJP managed to breach Amethi, another constituency seen as a Gandhi family bastion, in the 2019 general elections, Raebareli stood resolutely behind Congress, defying the saffron wave across UP.

The story is strikingly simiar in the Unchahar Assembly seat where the BJP failed to defeat SP’s Pandey despite clocking its best numbers in the 2022 UP elections. But the advantage that Manoj Pandey’s possible shift brings to the table for the BJP isn’t the only factor that could go against the Congress if Pandey is fielded from the Lok Sabha seat on a BJP ticket.

Other potential rebels who cross-voted in favour of the BJP nominee bring crucial manpower to BJP’s arsenal against the Congress’ first family. The other MLAs from the rebel camp also include Gauriganj (Amethi) MLA Rakesh Pratap Singh and Gosaiganj (Ayodhya) MLA Abhay Singh. Both leaders wield significant influence in their constituencies which fall iin close proximity to the Amethi Lok Sabha seat.

With the two Thakur leaders by its side, the BJP may also look at securing its fences if the Congress decides to field Rahul Gandhi from Amethi, a constituency the former party president has represented for three terms before being defeated by BJP’s Smriti Irani in the last Lok Sabha polls.

However, Raebareli has remained the crown jewel of the Congress – former PM Indira Gandhi won this seat thrice, her husband Feroze Gandhi was elected twice and former PM Jawaharlal Nehru’s grandnephew Arun Nehru won from this seat twice while Sheila Kaul, Jawaharlal Nehru’s sister-in-law, also won from the seat on two occasions.

The three occasions that the Congress lost Raebareli since Independence has been once in the post-Emergency elections, when Indira was defeated by the Janata Party’s Raj Narain, and in 1996 and 1998, when Indira’s cousins Vikram Kaul and Deepa Kaul lost to the BJP.

However, the story hasn’t been one of Congress’ dominance since 2014 with its vote share in Assembly elections as well as the Lok Sabha polls declining steadily. An analysis by The Indian Express shows that Congress’ vote share in the Raebareli constituency declined from 72.2 per cent in 2009 to 63.8 per cent in 2014 and 55.8 per cent in 2019.

While the seat remained steady for the Congress in Lok Sabha — it was the only seat Congress won in UP in 2019 — the UP Assembly elections showed the Congress’ fading influence in Uttar Pradesh. In the Assembly elections held in the state in 2022, the Congress lost in all the 5 Assembly segments in the Raebareli constituency, finished third in 4 of them, and the fourth in 1 seat. Across the five Assembly seats, Congress secured a vote share of just 13.2 per cent well behind the SP at 37.6 per cent and the BJP at 29.8 per cent.