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Journalism of Courage
That the road to Delhi runs through Uttar Pradesh is not lost on anyone. With 80 seats in a House of 543, UP has decided national outcomes and withstood the test of time, election after election.
It propelled Narendra Modi’s rise to power in 2014, sending 71 BJP MPs to Lok Sabha, and helped him consolidate his grip in 2019 by electing 62 party candidates and two of ally Apna Dal (S).
This time, UP was meant to set the ball rolling for an even larger mandate but by Tuesday (June 4) evening, the BJP was struggling with leads in only 33 constituencies, losing ground to the SP-Congress alliance.
That Modi’s own victory margin of 1.52 lakh votes in Varanasi had dropped from 4.79 lakh in 2019 was a pointer to how the BJP had lost the plot in UP this time. Other indicators of the setback in the state – and nationally – were the defeats of Union Minister Smriti Irani in Amethi, and sitting MP Lallu Singh in Faizabad (Ayodhya), months after the Ram temple consecration ceremony that captivated the nation.
As the state prepared to vote in each of the seven phases, conversations from campaign trails and rallies, field visits to constituencies, both urban and rural, gave ample indication that the BJP could run into turbulence.
A host of factors seemed to be at play – the SP appeared to have learnt from the BJP social engineering experiment of expanding its base; many among the BJP candidates were not those the party and supporters wished; warnings of local disconnect were ignored in the belief that the ‘Modi magic’ would override dissent and complaints; the lack of cohesion with RSS workers was not hidden; there appeared to be over-reliance on the state machinery, rather than the party organisation, for events, crowd mobilisation and voter outreach; and the disenchantment among the youth over the short-tenure Agnipath scheme in the armed forces and leak of recruitment exam papers became a crucial factor.
Consider these:
In the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections as well as the 2017 and 2022 Assembly polls, the BJP re-invented its social engineering plan. A party that was seen as representing certain upper castes and certain families expanded its base by inducting people from different parties, different social groups, promoting and elevating them. As a result, the party did well in all the four elections.
It had reduced the SP to the status of a MY (Muslim+Yadav) party. But this time, Akhilesh Yadav borrowed the approach, giving tickets to only five Yadavs (all from the Saifai family) in the SP list of 62 candidates. There were 10 Kurmis and 6 Kushwaha-Maurya-Shakya-Saini (castes considered close to the BJP for several years) and appointed Shyamlal Pal, an OBC, as state party president during the polls. This worked in favour of the SP.
The BJP, on the other hand while losing its own support base to SP, did not expand its base. “Our social engineering was governed by Central leaders and this time they were highly unaware and ignorant of the ground realities. While the SP expanded its base, the BJP reduced itself,” a BJP leader said.
UP BJP president Bhupendra Singh is a Jat from Moradabad and he appeared to have prevailed on the BJP central leadership to stitch an alliance with the RLD. While this appeared to have helped the RLD – it was leading in Baghpat and Bijnor – the BJP took a hit in Jat-dominated seats. Even the state president’s Moradabad seat is won by a SP candidate. The election trends showed that in many constituencies, where it won with a high margin in 2019, the BJP was struggling or had been defeated. An OBC leader of the UP BJP said, “Thakurs and also Brahmins are most privileged in this government. But Thakurs did not vote (for the party) in many constituencies.”
The BJP had a well-defined ticket selection system based on ground inputs. That changed. This time, it was primarily a core group comprising BJP president J P Nadda, general secretary (organisation) B L Santosh, Home Minister Amit Shah, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Deputy Chief Ministers Keshav Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, UP BJP chief Bhupendra Singh and UP BJP general secretary (organisation) Dharmpal Singh that decided tickets.
“It (ticket distribution) was based on reports of some survey agencies and reports from some intelligence agencies. They defined their own criteria, likings and dislikings about ticket claimants and did not listen to word on the ground realities,” a BJP leader said.
Some of the sitting MPs denied tickets learnt about it from party announcements and a few were informed an hour before the announcement of the candidate list.
The party, a state leader said, had reports that workers in constituencies such as Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Fatehpur Sikri, Mohanlalganj, Pratapgarh, Kaushambi, Allahabad, Jaunpur and Basti were not happy with the choice of candidates but it was overlooked “thinking that Modi Ji’s magic will work”.
“Mobilising crowds for public meetings was left to some state government officials who were making arrangements through village pradhans, ration shop owners and other government functionaries. This resulted in a paid crowd, the real voters were missing because the organisational machinery was being ignored,” a BJP leader said.
The RSS was also not involved in the way it was in 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the 2017 and 2022 Assembly polls. RSS volunteers were not as active as before, especially in western UP areas. A BJP leader from western UP said, “Some state-level functionaries were visiting districts in chartered planes or helicopters, dictating like bureaucrats and leaving without taking proper feedback or listening to local workers.”
The short-tenure Agnipath scheme that came with an uncertain future, the leak of recruitment exam papers contributed to disenchantment among the youth on the lookout for jobs.
In Bareilly, Badaun, Agra, Allahabad, Bhadohi, Rae Bareli, Amethi and Prayagraj, the grounds that used to be full of aspirants for jobs in the armed forces were mostly empty. An estimated 48 lakh candidates, who had applied for police jobs, were stunned when the examination was cancelled due to a paper leak.
Leaders of the INDIA bloc appeared to have succeeded in bringing together Muslims, OBCs, Dalits and even a section of upper castes in a few constituencies, raising issues ranging from “the need to save the Constitution” to ending the Agniveer scheme, the promise of 10 kg free ration to waiver of farm loans. With each phase of the elections, caste consolidation increased in favour of the SP-Congress candidates.
