Phase 1 will be tough for the BJP, the Samajwadi Party alliance is a more potent one, a weakened Yogi Adityanath will emerge due to loss of seats, expressways bring votes, and BSP will be in a king-maker role — the Uttar Pradesh results have busted these five myths that came to be associated with the elections.
Much of this was a result of the ‘political wisdom’ flowing out of misunderstanding of pre-election issues affecting the state. On ground, the realities were quite different. The results show it.
Myth 1: Phase One tough for BJP
Jat ‘anger’, the SP-RLD alliance and the farmer agitation — these three factors were cited to say the BJP will be wiped out in the first phase of the elections in West UP. The results, however, show that BJP won 46 out of the 58 seats in the first phase while the SP-RLD alliance had to be content with only 12 seats. This shows that the Jats did not desert the BJP and, in fact, it was the good law and order situation and the reluctance of the Jats to vote for the SP symbol even though RLD was its ally.
BJP also had support from the other major communities in West UP — mainly the Saini and Prajapati communities — and gained from a counter-polarisation in its favour in face of the clear Muslim outreach by the SP-RLD alliance for votes in Phase 1. The SP-RLD-BSP alliance had similarly failed to make a mark in West UP in the 2019 general elections with both late Ajit Singh and Jayant Chaudhary losing from Muzzafarnagar and Baghpat.
Myth 2: SP Alliance a more potent one
Another popular belief was that the SP’s alliance with RLD and SBSP was a more potent one than BJP’s alliance with NISHAD Party and Apna Dal. This proved to be untrue in both West as well as East UP. Like RLD could win only eight of the 33 seats it contested, with a mere 24% strike rate, SBSP could win only six seats out of 19 it had contested, at a 31% strike rate. Mahan Dal and Apna Dal (Krishna Patel), the other two allies of the Samajwadi Party, could not win a single seat in UP this time.
In comparison, Apna Dal won 12 out of 17 seats it contested at a 70% strike rate and NISHAD party won six out of the 10 seats it contested, at a 60% strike rate. Some NISHAD party candidates who contested on BJP ticket, like Sanjay Nishad’s son Sarvan Nishad from Chauri Chaura, won their seats for BJP.
Myth 3: Less Seats for BJP would mean a Weakened Yogi
It was much cited in UP elections that a narrow win for Yogi Adityanath could mean a ‘weakened’ chief minister in him and some even hinted a change of face. However, the issue was settled by Home Minister Amit Shah in an interview with News18 that Yogi Adityanath will be the CM and it will be a comfortable victory. BJP-alliance ultimately got 273 seats against 325 in the 2017 assembly election which was a wave election for the BJP.
A senior leader in the BJP, however, argued to News18 that the present victory with 273 seats was in a sense “even bigger” than 2017 as one, BJP increased its vote share by two percentage points this time and two, this election became a bi-polar contest with BSP’s total collapse unlike the 2017 election. The increased vote-share for BJP is a vote of confidence in Yogi.
Myth 4: BSP becoming a King-Maker
Mayawati was termed X-factor by many in the UP election, with murmurs that she could play the king-maker in case of a close verdict. However, she collapsed to just one seat and less than 13% vote share in these elections, only managing to hurt the SP’s chances in some seats in the state. This also proved that her winning 10 seats in the last Lok Sabha elections in 2019 was primarily due to the SP transferring its votes to the BSP as both parties were in an alliance then. Mayawati’s Brahmin-Dalit coalition gambit failed with her Muslim voters moving to SP and some of her Jatav voters moving to BJP.
Myth 5: Expressways Bring Votes
The Expressway jinx continues in Uttar Pradesh even in these elections. Akhilesh Yadav had lost majorly in the ‘Yadav Belt’ in the 2017 assembly elections after making the Agra-Lucknow expressway that passes through the area and could not make up these losses there even in the present elections. The BJP government made the Purvanchal Expressway to connect East UP to Lucknow but lost 25 out of the 26 seats in the four East UP districts through which the showpiece expressway passes. People’s choice for a vote did not depend on the expressway.
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