Team Herald
New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday felt the political tremors from the Lok Sabha by-election results as the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party lost both seats that were held by Chief Minister Yogi and his deputy chief minister, showing the invincibility of the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party combine in the crucial state that sends 80 members to the House.
Add to this the strength of the Congress if a grand alliance materialises, an enough reason for the BJP to feel rattled. The results clearly show that Mayawati’s BSP has a transferable vote that other parties may lack. The division of the opposition votes that helped the BJP in the past may not happen in 2019 from the way the opposition parties are proceeding to strike a grand alliance, keeping aside their differences in the states.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi was least upset from the Congress candidates losing their security deposit in the two by-elections in UP as he tweeted that “results clearly show the voters’ anger built up against the BJP so much so that they will vote for the anti-BJP candidates whose winning chances are the highest.” He added that the Congress is keen to rejuvenate the party in U.P. “but that cannot happen overnight.”
Sonia Gandhi’s dinner Tuesday night was enough indication of a broad anti-BJP coalition and the results now, be in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, provide a powerful rationale for achieving this objective. Congress leaders argued after the results that Phulpur and Gorakhpur have given a concrete answer to the vital question on how to stop the Narendra Modi juggernaut.
Both Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya had won their seats, Gorakhpur and Phulpur by over three lakh votes in 2014. Yogi had won Gorakhpur for three consecutive terms and the idea of BJP losing that seat was beyond comprehension. The Yogi government was preparing to celebrate completion of its one year in power while the public has delivered this rude shock in the honeymoon period itself.
Arguing that the central theme of the results was disenchantment with the BJP, the Congress leaders said this would automatically alter the national political dynamics and empower the demoralised opposition forces. They pointed out that the Congress would naturally be the main beneficiary being the sole national alternative to the BJP.
On the Congress proving the worst loser in these two by-elections in Uttar Pradesh, the political pundits said assessing the impact of these outcomes in terms of the number of votes polled by the Congress was naïve as the larger message is the success of the experiment of anti-BJP coalition and the psychological boost to the Opposition. As a top Congress leader underlined, “at Sonia Gandhi’s dinner, the collective prayer was for the victory of the Samajwadi candidate, and not for the Congress nominee.”
Insisting that Sonia and Rahul Gandhi were the main architects of a broader anti-BJP coalition and every leader of the friendly party will take this as their victory – be it Sharad Pawar or Mamata Banerjee or Lalu Prasad, the party leadeer said: “Don’t presume the Congress will be left out in the lurch in the broad alliance. It is for the BJP to look at the result with shock and dismay, while we look at it with great hope.”
When the BSP decided to back the SP candidates and put its cadres at work for winning the elections, the Congress did not pull out its candidates or followed suit to rally behind the SP candidates. No tactical mistake in fighting the two elections alone. Congress general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad had discussed the possibility of fielding joint candidates with SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP’s Satish Misra.
While BSP said it was not interested in contesting the bye-elections, the Congress and the SP felt contesting separately was a better option. While both parties were keen to charge up their workers through this battle, there was also a perception that the Congress could harm the BJP by cutting into the upper caste votes.
A party leader from Uttar Pradesh said the outcome of the results was obvious from the day Mayawati declared her support to the SP candidates as anybody wanting to defeat the BJP knew that the SP-BSP alliance is the best bet. The Congress did not pull out when Mayawati declared support in the middle of the electioneering when the campaign was in full swing, he said.
Other leaders from the state said the BJP must be in panic as losing the seats held by its CM and deputy CM is not an ordinary development but a political upheaval and a precursor to the BJP being wiped out from the Uttar Pradesh map in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
They refused to accept rejection of the Congress in the by-elections as it also lost in Bihar’s Bhabhua Assembly poll, asserting that it has given a psychological boost to the Congress that the people are fed up with the Modi bluffs and looking for alternatives. Who else could be the alternative to BJP in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh except the Congress, they asked.
Congress Deputy Leader in Lok Sabha Jyotiraditya Scindia echoed this sentiment saying, “The message is that people have seen through their jumlas and propaganda and started rejecting the BJP across the length and breadth of the country. You have seen how they barely survived in Gujarat and got defeated in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan bypolls. People have made their mind to show them the door.”
