They are here for all seasons, before elections, during elections and even after elections. They may lack electoral presence but they have ample political presence. Smaller parties in Uttar Pradesh have lost their credibility but are financially going great guns. These parties hitch on to bigger political bandwagons whenever the latter need moral support and jump off the same when the deed is done.
These parties threaten to play spoilsport and sometimes even succeed in causing major upsets.
In the past five years, over two dozen parties in UP, having no more than a few hundred members/ supporters, have become increasingly visible on the political horizon.
These parties first climbed on to the Jan Morcha platform in 2005 when former Prime Minister V.P. Singh re-launched the outfit with Raj Babbar, then a suspended SP MP.
The Bhartiya Samaj Party, Rashtrawadi Communist Party, Bhartiya Samman Dal, National Loktantrik Party, Janwadi Party were among the two dozen odd political outfits that swore allegiance to the Jan Morcha and vowed to contest the assembly elections in 2007 as a cohesive group.
By 2007, however, the “cohesive” group had completely disintegrated, with some parties even vanishing from the political firmament.
A few parties joined hands with the Samajwadi Party, some went the Congress way and the rest contested and lost on their own.
The same parties have now re-invented and regrouped themselves and are now pledging support to expelled SP MP Amar Singh who has floated his own Lok Manch. They now come under names like Awami Samta Dal, Vanchit Zamat Party, Vanchit Uday Party, Jai Bharat Samanata Party and Yuva Garib Vitrak Kalyan Dal. A leader of one of these parties admitted that it was the lure of lucre that made them change loyalties so fast.