BJP suffers setback in bypolls in 3 key states

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Sep 17, 2014 DHNS: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered its third major setback in a row in byelections after it lost 13 out of 23 seats it vacated in three key states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

This indicates that the party has not been able to consolidate the enormous gains made four months ago in the Parliamentary elections.

The severe electoral drubbing in Uttar Pradesh—including in Rohaniya, which is in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency—added to the abysmal performance by the BJP under new president Amit Shah.

The demoralised Samajwadi Party (SP), however, sprang back as eight of its nominees snatched victory from the National Democratic Alliance. The BJP could barely manage three seats of Saharapur (City), Lucknow (East) and Noida.

The Congress, too, which was wiped out in the recent Lok Sabha elections, got some solace as it wrested three seats from the BJP in Rajasthan. The loss of Surajgarh, in particular, is seen as an agonising defeat for Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, who had hand-picked former health minister Digambar Singh to contest the seat.

The Congress scalping three of the nine seats in Gujarat is being seen as a reflection of the leadership quality of new Chief Minister Anandiben Patel, who replaced Modi after he ruled the state for 12 years before becoming the prime minister.

The only silver lining was that the BJP was able to make inroads into West Bengal by winning the Basirhat South seat and coming second in the Chowringhee constituency, which was won by the ruling Trinamool Congress.

In public, the party conceded that the outcome in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan was a cause for worry. Leaders attributed the poor showing to overconfidence among the party top brass about “Modi wave” delivering a second time after the recent Lok Sabha poll, and intra-party squabbling, more so in UP and Rajasthan.

Union minister Uma Bharti, Savitri Phule and Ajay Kumar Mishra and many leaders did not campaign for the candidates contesting the seats they had vacated to enter Parliament.

In UP, the BJP’s attempt to polarise voters by giving the reins of campaigning to seer-cum-Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath, indicted by the Election Commission for his hate speech, did not seem to have worked as it did in the western region of the state in the Lok Sabha elections. The party could not consolidate Hindu as well as dalit votes.

Due to counter-polarisation, the Muslims voted in favour of the SP in a contest where the Congress was insignificant. The Bahujan Samaj Party was not in the fray.

The dalits, claim SP leaders, voted for Mulayam Singh Yadav’s party this time, unlike in the Lok Sabha elections.  

“These results are not a referendum on the Central government. They were fought totally on local issues. The results have given us an opportunity to correct local level shortcomings and will definitely help us win the coming State Assembly elections,” BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told reporters here.

BJP secretary Shrikant Sharma, however, accepted that “the UP and Rajasthan poll results are not as per our expectations. We will analyse seat-wise during our discussions with both state units”.

The Congress and Samajwadi Party described the results as people’s rejection of BJP’s communal politics. Three Lok Sabha and 32 assembly segments in nine states voted on September 13. Overall, the BJP won 12, Samajwadi Party managed 8, and Congress 7, while the Telugu Desam Party, Trinamool Congress, All India United Democratic Front and the CPM cornered one each. In Sikkim, an independent walked away with one seat and counting in Antagarh in Chhattisgarh, held by BJP, will be held on September 20.

At least two senior party leaders, C P Thakur and Shatrughan Sinha, who are not on the right side of Modi and Shah, sought “deep introspection” on the back-to-back electoral reverses.