In a huge embarrassment to the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh, both Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya lost their home turfs in the parliament byelections. The results, announced on Wednesday, also ended 28 years of dominance of ‘mutt’ in Gorakhpur.
The results of Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha bypolls, which saw arch-rivals SP and BSP joining hands, have rung an alarming bell for the BJP ahead of the parliamentary polls in 2019. If the alliance between Bua and Bauba remains alive, it will pose a major challenge to the saffron party.
How did BJP lose these two seats? Political analysts cite a number of reasons including selection of “wrong” candidates in both the constituencies.
In Phulpur, the party fielded Kaushlendra Patel, an outsider, who hails from Varanasi and was not much acceptable to local Patels. The division in Patel votes proved detrimental to the BJP. In Gorakhpur, too, the BJP committed mistake by fielding a Brhamin, Upendra Dutt Shukla, while the SP went for a ‘Nishad’ candidate, Praveen Nishad. Nishads, who are in considerable majority in the area, preferred somebody from their own caste to a Brahmin candidate.
Secondly, ever since the BJP government was formed in the state, party's grass-root level cadre have been complaining of neglect and step-motherly treatment by senior leaders and bureaucracy. Also, BJP's micro-management failed this time. At booth-level committees, which are the back bone of winning any elections, workers lacked enthusiasm and aggressiveness.
BJP will have to think why their workers were not ‘charged’ this time. According to some party insiders, at district and other micro levels, the party workers were not getting the importance which they had expected at the time of formation of the government.
In both the parliamentary seats, BJP failed to convince the OBCs that the party would be with them. It had relied heavily on OBCs in the assembly elections, and the OBC votes had played a crucial role in BJP’s victory.
Ultimately, a surprising alliance between SP and BSP, just 10 days before the polls, ensured BJP’s defeat. Initially bitter enemies, SP and the BSP had softened their stance after the assembly elections. Both were keen to stop BJP’s wining streak. Their solidarity was tested in Gorakhpur and Phulpur. Though BSP and SP did not stitch any alliance officially, BSP chief Mayawati had announced that her party would support the SP candidates in the byelections.
A jubilant Akhilesh Yadav, the president of Samjwadi Party, said: “This victory is a message against central and state government’s policies.”
Accepting the defeat, Adityanath said that BJP failed to understand implications of alliance between SP and BSP and that the defeat was due to over-confidence.
Though the Congress has lost badly in both the constituencies, it seems happy with the defeat of the BJP. Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that results of bypolls have made it clear that voters would vote for those parties which have the potential to defeat the BJP.