A SMALL BYELECTION of big consequences is playing out in Uttar Pradesh. Nine assembly constituencies will go to the hustings on November 20 while the poll date for a tenth―Milkipur (Faizabad)―is yet to be announced.
In an assembly with 403 members, 10 is a tiny number. But after the Lok Sabha elections that left the BJP with just 33 seats, compared with the 62 it won in 2019, this is an election of prestige, of salvaging bruised egos. It is also the most significant election before the state chooses its next Vidhan Sabha in 2027.
The constituencies that go to the polls are spread across the state. In the west are Ghaziabad, Khair (Aligarh), Kundarki (Moradabad) and Meerapur (Muzaffarnagar). Phulpur (Allahabad), Katehari (Ambedkarnagar) and Sishamau (Kanpur) fall in the centre, while Karhal (Mainpuri) is close to the centre. The last is Majhawan (Mirzapur) in the east.
In 2022, the Samajwadi Party won five of these seats (Milkipur included), and the BJP came in second with three. One seat each went to the Nishad Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal, both allies of the BJP.
Between 2022 and 2024, the INDIA bloc saw an increase in the vote share in all these constituencies, while the National Democratic Alliance lost its share in all. While the Samajwadi Party has had three winning streaks in Karhal, Kundarki and Sishamau; it has won Milkipur and Katehari twice. The BJP’s show is poorer in comparison. Ghaziabad, Khair and Phulpur are seats it has won twice. The Bahujan Samaj Party, which, in a departure from norm, is fighting on all seats, only managed to increase its vote share in Meerapur though it won no seats in 2022.
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One of the most interesting contests of this byelection is in Karhal, which was vacated by Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav when he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Kannauj. Here, Akhilesh’s nephew Tej Pratap is facing Anujesh Pratap Singh, also part of the Yadav clan as he is married to the sister of Dharmendra Yadav, the Samajwadi Party MP from Azamgarh. The Yadav clan was quick to wash its hands off the candidate. Shivpal Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s younger brother, went as far as saying that all relations with Singh were over.
Karhal is a constituency that the BJP has not won even once in the last two decades. But Singh, a former Zilla Panchayat office bearer, is assured of a BJP win. “The janta is fighting for me and for the party,” he said. The widely held speculation is that Singh was chosen only because no one else was ready to fight in a constituency that is most likely to vote in Akhilesh’s name. Singh dismissed this. “With a BJP win, Karhal will see development like never before,” he said. “I was given a ticket because I am a loyal soldier of the BJP since 2017. My initial interest was not to fight the election but then I am here to serve the party.” On his list of priorities is an old age home for the constituency.
For the Samajwadi Party, almost all its candidates are riding on the coattails of popular family members. In Sishamau, for instance, Naseem Solanki is standing in for her husband Irfan Solanki, who is currently serving a seven-year jail sentence. Naseem said that her fight was as much to prove her husband’s innocence as it was to fulfil his dreams for the constituency. It is the same constituency that Yogi Adityanath said was suffering for the misdeeds of its elected representative. Yogi has campaigned for party candidate Suresh Awasthi, as has state finance minister Suresh Khanna.
The candidates are of little consequence in this high stakes election. It is a fight between the BJP and the Samajwadi Party, between its most visible faces Yogi Adityanath and Akhilesh Yadav.
Adityanath, who did a whirlwind three-day campaign in the nine constituencies, stirred memories of the lawlessness during the Samajwadi Party rule and ran with the slogan ‘Jahan dikhe Sapayi, wahan betiyan ghabrayi’ (Roughly, wherever a SP member is seen, daughters are scared). Akhilesh is clinging on to his PDA routine [pichda (backward classes), dalit, alpasankhyak (minorities)], which worked in the Lok Sabha election. Both are relying heavily on word play―Akhilesh claiming that his party’s PDA vision has the same letters as DAP (diammonium phosphate), the fertiliser that the state government has failed to distribute. Yogi’s twist on PDA is: “Production house for dangai, apradhi [rioters, criminals]”.
The BJP’s seriousness for this election can be gauged from the fact that a 15-member team of ministers was first tasked with selecting candidates. Then a list of 30 candidates was sent to the Centre. Alliance partner Sanjay Nishad bargained hard to retain the Majhawan seat for his Nishad Party. The BJP was unrelenting in that it wanted the election to be fought on its symbol, and gave the ticket to Shuchismita Maurya, who won the seat in 2017. Nishad said, “We have respected the wishes of the BJP, which is like an elder brother to us.” But the murmurs of discontent in his party have grown and on the off chance that Maurya loses, the alliance will face some rough weather.
It is the same kind of hold the Samajwadi Party has exercised―denying the Congress any seats, yet saying that the parties are fighting the election as a united front.
Senior Congress leader Chandra Prakash Rai said that the Samajwadi Party had left two seats for the party but in this ‘do or die’ election, the alliance was not ready to take any risks. “We have our MPs and senior leaders helping the Samajwadi Party candidates in all constituencies,” he said. “This is a very high stakes election, for if Adityanath loses there will be serious questions about his leadership.”
It is these onerous questions which this small byelection will answer.