In Ayodhya redux Milkipur bypoll, Yogi leads BJP’s charge against SP

Awadhesh’s son Ajeet is now set to get SP ticket from Milkipur, and defeating him would be as good as it gets for the BJP.

While the SP’s Faizabad victory was part of its surprisingly strong showing in UP in the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP has bounced back since then, winning six of the nine Assembly seats for which bypolls were held in November; ally RLD won another. The SP ended up with only two constituencies, losing its bastion Kundarki and another sitting seat to the BJP.

This reversal has made Milkipur even more of a prestige fight for the two parties, and could well set the tone for the 2027 Assembly polls. The SP, which made much of its Faizabad win, including giving Awadhesh the pride of place in Parliament, knows that a loss in Milkipur would dim the party’s Ayodhya sparkle. The BJP realises this, as well as the fact that an opposite result would put a new spring in the SP’s steps.

Winning Milkipur would also break the BJP’s dry run in the seat, having won it only once in the past three decades. That was in 2017, when the party was at the height of its Modi wave in UP.

Adityanath has not just taken direct control of the Milkipur campaign, but also camped both his Deputy CMs and six of his ministers in the seat. Less than a month before the bypoll, on January 11, the CM will perform “abhishek” of Lord Ram at the Ayodhya temple, to mark one year of its consecration.

Three days ago, during a visit to Ayodhya, Adityanath interacted with booth-wise workers from Milkipur, setting the agenda for the campaign and asking them to present a united front. He is reported to have told the workers that if the BJP could win Kundarki, it could wrest Milkipur too.

The SP has alleged poll malpractices behind the BJP win, and on Tuesday, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said that he hoped the Milkipur election would be “fair”.

All eyes are now on whom the BJP fields from Milkipur. In Ajeet, the SP has a Dalit face, and the BJP will be conscious of this at a time when both sides are contesting for the SC vote.

In 2017, the BJP’s winning candidate was Baba Gorakhnath. However, in the 2022 Assembly polls, Gorakhnath lost to Awadhesh by a decent margin of about 13,000 votes. Milkipur was the only one of the five Assembly segments falling under the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency that the BJP did not win in 2022.

As for the other parties, while the BSP is expected to keep away – the party has again decided to shun bypolls – Congress leaders said Tuesday that they would back the SP candidate. In the November bypolls, the Congress had opted out after ally SP refused to part with more than a couple of the nine seats for it.

Milkipur had been expected to see bypolls along with the nine Assembly seats in November, but election here was postponed on the grounds of a technical issue, as a petition regarding the 2022 Assembly election in the seat was pending in court.