BJP jolted by massive UP setback

The trends available for 76 seats, showed BJP and allies leading in 32, Bahujan Samaj Party in 14, Samajwadi Party in 24 and Congress in 10 constituencies. In the dissolved Lok Sabha, BJP and allies had 60 seats followed by SP (20), BSP (4) and Samajwadi Janata Party (1). The Congress had failed to open its record last time.

The trends confirmed a division of the 16 per cent Muslim vote bank evenly between the Congress, SP and BSP. Italso demonstrated that the entire Muslim population moved over to the party which was in a position to defeat the BJP in a particular constituency.

The BJP leaders themselves concede that. `We were faced with an anti-BJPism phenomenon in UP, something like anti-Congressism of 1977 or 1989. Though BSP, SP and Congress were fighting separately, they silently helped the party which was in a position to defeat the BJP,’ says BJP general secretary K N Govindacharya.

Both Congress and BSP took a lot of care in choosing their candidates this time, changing almost 80 to 90 per cent of their ’98 nominees. Moreover, they also kept two other factors in mind: the caste combination of a particular constituency as well as the caste of rival candidates.

Factional feuds within the state BJP coupled with an anti-incumbency factor against the Kalyan Singh Government in UP seemed to have polarised the electorate against the BJP.

The fact that Kalyan Singh campaigned half-heartedly after being persuaded by the party highcommand after the first phase of polls were over, signalled to his followers that he was deeply hurt and disenchanted with the BJP leadership.

Kalyan’s supporters, including his own son, his close associate Sakshi Maharaj, and some of his ministerial colleagues like Jitendra Jaiswal, openly campaigned against the official BJP nominees. The UP Chief Minister did not refute Sakshi’s claims that he (Kalyan) was in league with Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav. This lent some credence to rumours that he was not comfortable in the BJP.

While his backward-caste supporters deserted the BJP in the belief that Kalyan would be sacked, the upper-caste BJP supporters were not enthused by the party leadership’s unwillingness to remove him despite a long list of complaints against him.

The BJP top brass had to publicly announce — barely 48 hours before the last phase of polling — that Kalyan wouldn’t be replaced. This was after the Chief Minister, in an interview to The Indian Express, suggested thatthe central leadership should have taken action against his detractors.

However, after the UP election trends started pouring in, party president Kushabhau Thakre said in a TV interview this evening that some changes would have to be made in UP.

`The BJP is paying the price of the intra-party squabbles and fielding wrong candidates (read sitting MPs). They should take the decision now to stem the rot, but, only after taking the allies in confidence,’ Naresh Agarwal, the Loktantrik chief told this paper. Although Agarwal declined to elaborate, there were indications that soon there would be a demand for a change in leadership.