Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 26 March 2018 | Page 20

UP BYPOLLS
The Unease
Under Those
Lotus Crowns
Losing the UP CM’s home turf has brought a rare
mood to the Modi-Shah party: gloomy contemplation
by Bhavna Vij-Aurora
A
LL the elation and beating of
drums after the big “ideological
victory” in Tripura had barely
died down when the Uttar
Pradesh bypoll results came
along as a corrective, stunning
the BJP into gloomy contemplation.
Gone was the bluster that toppled
Lenin’s statue and held out the threat of
“ek dhakka aur” to a few more shaky
state governments.
It was a chastened UP chief minister
Yogi Adityanath who, responding to the
news, admitted to “overconfidence” and
“failure to understand the significance of
the SP-BSP partnership”. For a man
touted as the BJP’s star campaigner from
Tripura to Kerala, it’s a humbling experi-
ence to fail to hold on to his own
Gorakhpur, which he has represented for
five terms over two decades in the Lok
Sabha. The BJP had not lost the seat even
once since 1989 when it saw fluctuating
fortunes elsewhere in the state and coun-
try. The byelection in the constituency
was necessitated after Yogi was hand-
picked to lead a 325-strong majority
government in the state last year. Even as
he relinquished his Lok Sabha seat, he
continued to be the mahant or chief priest
of the Gorakhnath mandir that wields
immense clout in the region.
Phulpur was the other constituency
where the BJP suffered an embarrass-
ing loss—the degree only slightly lesser,
because it was held by deputy CM
Keshav Prasad Maurya. The OBC leader
would often boast of having won the
seat by a margin “bigger than Pandit
Nehru” (Phulpur, a mix of urban and
rural zones spinning off from Allahabad
20 OUTLOOK 26 March 2018
city, is fam­ous for having been Jawa­
harlal Nehru’s constituency).
The victory margin of 59,613 by which
Samajwadi Party candidate Nagendra
Pratap Singh Patel defeated his BJP
counterpart Kaushalendra Singh Patel
in Phulpur may not have broken records,
but, along with the shock in Gorakhpur,
it was enough to convince the saffron
party that a recalibration of strategy is
urgently needed, both at the state and
national level, to prepare for the 2019
Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP’s Lok Sabha seats have now
come down to 272, down by 10 since its
historic 2014 win and the exact number
needed for a simple majority. Maybe it’s
not serious enough for alarm bells to ring,
but it’s not a comfortable feeling, what
with many of its NDA allies unhappy with
the BJP. The TDP has withdrawn its
ministers, and the Shiv Sena has been
sore with its rival saffronite party for a
while. They have 16 and 18 MPs respec-
tively—it doesn’t mean much, but it’s the
kind of time when people are looking at
those numbers with new interest.
Moreover, there’s an unpleasant pat-
tern to the way the party has lost
high-visibility bypolls in Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh and now in UP. Just
before that, Gujarat was more a narrow
escape than a morale-booster. And all
these are its core territories. Though the
“Opposition unity against
our party doesn’t look
like a ­far-fetched idea
anymore,” says a general
secretary of the BJP.
win in Tripura was huge, both in num-
bers and in symbolism, it was marred by
the toppling of Lenin’s statue and app­
lauding messages on it (later deleted) by
senior leaders like Ram Madhav and
even Governor Tathagata Roy. The party
had to launch major damage control
measures after a Periyar statue was
vandalised in Tamil Nadu, a state where
it is trying to make inroads. And now,
the spectre of two sworn enemies, the SP
and the BSP, coming together to defeat
the BJP in UP, ruled by a Hindutva icon.
Is the sheen finally off the BJP?
“It’s time BJP leaders sit and analyse
these results. The defeat in the seats
represented by the CM and his deputy
is significant,” says political scientist
Sudha Pai, who feels this should serve
as an eye-opener for the party. “The
leaders have become too confident.
There wasn’t even much electioneering
in the run-up to the byelections. The
party took it very lightly, as if its victory
was a given,” she says.
Pai, who keeps a keen analytical eye on
UP, has an interesting observation. She
says that though the SP-BSP presented
a formidable front, “perhaps even they