BJP’s Rout in MLC Polls, a Sign of Disillusionment Among Voters

Whether the results of the recent Uttar Pradesh legislative polls are any reflection, remains a big question.

The ruling Samajwadi Party may have swept as many as 30 of the 36 State Legislative Council (upper house) seats that went to poll. The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) that swept the Lok Sabha polls barely 20 months back may have drawn a complete blank.

SP’s other sworn rival Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) too may not have been able to win anything beyond two seats while Congress may be content with just one and the remaining three may have gone to independents. But whether the results are any reflection on the future when the country’s most populous state goes to poll 12 months from now, remains a million dollar question.

Precursor to the 2017 Assembly Polls

Sure enough, both the chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav have got a reason to smile. In fact Akhilesh has more reason to revel because the father – for a change - allowed him to handpick his nominees who won hands down.

Akhilesh and his team are busy going to town announcing that this victory was a precursor to the main battle in March 2017. The opposition in one voice, however seems to dismiss this claim as a misnomer. “Like several other indirect elections, this one to these 36 seats in the legislative council was bound to go to the party in power”, points out political analyst Govind Pant Raju.

Lucknow mayor and senior BJP leader Dinesh Sharma himself attributes his party’s rout to that very reason. According to him, “when we were in power , most of these legislative council seats were with us and likewise was the case during the Mayawati regime , when bulk of the seats were with BSP.”

Obviously peeved over his party’s devastating defeat, Sharma also sought to add, “let me tell you that several key issues relating to legislative council elections have been raised in a petition before the country’s apex court ; and one of the issues relates to election of members by local bodies because what has been discovered that most of the members making it to the upper house through this route have nothing to do with local bodies but manage to get elected with the use of money and muscle power.”

Whither the Modi Wave

Notwithstanding the claims of this important BJP leader who was currently in-charge of the party’s Gujarat affairs, fact remains that the picture is not all that rosy for the saffron party in Uttar Pradesh. And evidently, that was largely on account of the party’s central leadership refusing to rise above Ayodhya and Hindutva.

Even as the May 2014 landslide was attributed to a ‘Modi wave’ , crafted skillfully by the man who chose to stick to his “development agenda” and shunned even a remote reference to Hindutva.

Party resident Amit Shah and the Hindutva brigade however, went about impressing upon all and sundry that it was the result of “Hindu polarisation.”

After all that was the only way he could have hogged all the credit for the Lok Sabha magic which actually gave him a cakewalk to don the mantle of BJP national president. Modi did not mind his protégé stealing away all the glory because it suited him fine as long as he could have his man Friday bossing over the party , while he was himself at the helm of the country’s governance.

Hindutva Card Backfired

But what happened within the next few months when the state went on to hold bye elections to 10 assembly and one Lok Sabha seat, was an eye opener.

An unbridled Amit Shah entrusted the leadership of the party’s campaign to a diehard communalist, the saffron-robed Yogi Adityanath, who left no stone unturned to play up Hindutva by raising his pitch on “love jihad” and “ghar wapsi”. But to the entire saffron brigade’s utter shock, BJP came tumbling down on eight of the 11 seats.  

While Adityanath was asked to lie low for a while, other leaders such as Sadhvi Prachi and Sakshi Maharaj were let loose to keep the Hindutva flame kindling at brief intervals.

A year down the line, when Shah insisted on toeing the same line at three bye-elections to the state assembly, BJP once again had to eat a humble pie on two of the seats. But, what was even more glaring that the leadership’s bid to shift focus towards the Ayodhya temple misfired very badly.

Disillusionment Among Voters

The party lost miserably in Bikapur , which lies barely 27 km from Ayodhya. Not only did the assembly seat go to Samajwadi Party, but BJP was relegated to the third position and that too precisely 71 votes ahead of Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), who sought to make a maiden entry of his candidate from here.

While BJP’s captive ‘hindutva’ vote was bound to hang on with the party under all circumstances, the larger chunk of the floating Hindu vote , which gave Modi the unprecedented surge in UP in May 2014, does not appear to be as enamoured of him anymore.

“After taking our aspirations soaring in the name of development, the party is back on its beaten track – Ayodhya and rabid Hindutva – it is so very disappointing”, observed Mamta Saxena , a young housewife , who, until a few months back was ready to swear by Modi’s name .

Such sentiment was also visible on college and university campuses, where the recent developments like Rohit Vemula’s suicide and hounding of Kanhaiya Kumar had also contributed immensely to their simmering disillusionment with Modi.

(The writer is a senior journalist.)