BJP’S GRIP OVER UP IS COMPLETE

PARTY BAGS 14 out of 16 civic bodies • BSP wrests two seats • Cong routed in Amethi • SP a straggler

The results of election to urban local bodies in Uttar Pradesh have come as a vindication of the hard work put in by Yogi Adityanath – more as a campaigner for the Bharatiya Janata Party, and less as the State’s Chief Minister.

The BJP has been third time lucky in the state, with its mayoral candidates triumphing in 14 of the 16 municipal corporations. Lucknow, which elected BJP's Sanyukta Bhatia as its first woman mayor, was among the prestigious seats, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi, temple town Ayodhya and Adityanath's home turf Gorakhpur, which the BJP won. BJP also scored impressive victories in Kanpur and Ghaziabad with its nominees emerging victors by a margin of over one lakh votes.

The surprise outcome is also a comeback of sorts for the Bahujan Samaj Party, which was decimated in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the 2017 state assembly elections; it has wrested two municipal corporations -- in western UP's Aligarh and Meerut towns. It was the BJP all the way in Allahabad and Agra also.

On the other hand, the former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, and its now-off-now-on alliance partner Congress have suffered probably the most humiliating defeat in these urban municipal elections.

The outcome is a painful blow for Rahul Gandhi on the eve of his coronation as party president; the BJP could not have hoped to have done better in Amethi, a pocket borough of the Gandhi family. The Samajwadi Party, too, had a bad run in its strongholds of Etah, Etawah, Mainpuri, Firozabad and Kannauj

The victory has put the BJP on course to achieving 100 per cent success in the Lok Sabha elections – Yogi Adityanath

but the Amethi loss was more distressing as it will cast its shadow on the Gujarat assembly poll.

Ever since the civic election schedule was announced, the BJP had shown a kind of seriousness about them which was unusual. The distribution of tickets, campaign planning, manifesto release, publicity material, etcetera, were all of a scale that matched an Assembly election.

And to top it all, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath kicked off the campaign with an election rally in Ayodhya; in all, he addressed 26 rallies all over the State. Akhilesh Yadav, in fact, took a dig at Yogi’s efforts, saying that the latter was “scared” of the SP’s “popularity” and was constrained to campaign in all corners of the State. Yadav had managed to evince laughs from his supporters when he made this comment: but the Yogi is having the last laugh now. The victory, Adityanath said, has put the BJP on course to achieving 100 per cent success in the Lok Sabha elections. He also had a dig at Rahul. "People who were saying big things about Gujarat, they haven't been able to open their account and have been cleared out of Amethi, too," the chief minister said.

After recording a massive victory in the UP Lok Sabha election in 2014 and the Assembly election in 2017, the BJP has established an almost complete control over the State’s political landscape. Its hold over the people in the state appears invincible for the time being.

One might deduce that behind this is communal polarisation rather than the Yogi’s government’s performance since it came to power in March this year. But the fact remains that in electoral democracy, the outcome is what matters. The results are a clear wake-up call to the nonBJP parties: they have still not managed to read the minds of the people. It is not about providing basic amenities or fulfilling election promises that is doing the trick for the BJP, but something deeper that is touching a raw nerve. The BJP is apparently providing a soothing touch.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the results reaffirmed people's support for the GST which has made doing business "easier" for traders. BJP chief Amit Shah said that it was clear that the people had embraced the economic reforms and rejected politics of caste, appeasement and dynasty.

This was the first time that the BSP has contested the urban body polls on the party symbol. Earlier it used to extend support to independent candidates. Unlike Adityanath, BSP chief Mayawati did not campaign in these elections. However, the party has been stealthily trying to consolidate its hold in the last six months, especially after BSP chief Mayawati quit her Rajya Sabha seat. Whether it will lead to a consolidation of the Dalit and the Muslim vote remains to be seen.