In UP, BJP Suffered Heavy Losses in Regions Where Modi’s Prestige Was at Stake

There may well be several reasons for the BJP to underperform in a state that it has dominated over the past decade.

The BJP’s dismal electoral performance in Uttar Pradesh is the key cause for Prime Minister Modi falling well short of a clear mandate in the Lok Sabha on his own steam.

Considering that it is India’s largest and politically most significant state, touted by most political pundits and psephologists to be in the ruling party’s pocket and widely expected to contribute an overwhelming majority of the 80 seats that were contested, the results were quite extraordinary.

Indeed, the steep slump from 71 seats in 2014 and 62 in 2019 to a meagre 33 this time is perhaps the most remarkable story of the entire 2024 national elections.

Significantly, the ruling party’s big defeat in Uttar Pradesh was underlined by heavy losses in the regions where Modi’s personal prestige was at stake. Of the nine constituencies falling in the Ayodhya region, the BJP lost in five, including Faizabad, which houses the magnificent Ram Temple that the Prime Minister had inaugurated amidst much fanfare on the eve of the polls, expecting huge political dividends.

In the Varanasi region, where Modi, shifting from his home state of Gujarat, has contested for the past three Lok Sabha polls, the BJP lost as many as nine of the 12 constituencies, winning just two itself and one by its ally Apna Dal (Soneylal).

The Prime Minister himself managed to win but had to suffer the humiliation of having his victory margin slashed by more than two-thirds from over five lakh votes to barely above one and a half lakh votes.

It is noteworthy that the BJP lost last time across the vast expanse of Uttar Pradesh in all four main provinces Western, Eastern, Central, and Bundelkhand. Quite incredibly, despite carrying out a political coup on the eve of the poll in Western Uttar Pradesh by luring away prominent Jat leader and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Jayant Chowdhury from the INDIA bloc, the BJP still managed to lose heavily in the province.

In fact, the party and its ally, the RLD, managed to win just one each of the eight seats that went to the polls in the first phase, all from the Western province. Having heard about the possible rout of his party in the first phase, it was at this stage that Modi decided to use more explicit communal rhetoric to rally his core Hindu support base. Fortunately for the BJP, its performance considerably improved in the second phase, held also in the same area, but it still ended up losing six seats overall in the whole region.

In Eastern Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP has been traditionally weak but has made impressive gains in the past two elections, it got slaughtered this time, winning merely 11 out of the total of 32 seats, a major loss of 13 seats from the last elections. In Central Uttar Pradesh, which has the state capital Lucknow, the BJP lost seven seats, while it lost three in Bundelkhand.

There may well be several reasons for the BJP to underperform like this in a state where it has dominated so much over the past decade, both in parliamentary and assembly polls. Firstly, this is the first time since the Modi-Shah juggernaut started gathering momentum in 2014 that it has met a serious political challenge posed by the rejuvenated opposition alliance led by Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi.

With their backs to the wall, the duo put up a far more spirited and united battle than in previous elections over the past few polls and managed to overcome their handicap in money, muscle, and organisational resources in a replay of the David versus Goliath battle.

The BJP’s hitherto successful strategy to string together a wide-ranging electoral coalition of upper, middle, and backward castes, along with a section of Dalits, also fell apart in these elections. With Akhilesh actively wooing the backward castes and Rahul Gandhi appealing to Dalits to save Babasaheb Ambedkar’s Constitution from being amended by a brute majority BJP dictatorship and Muslims consolidating behind the INDIA bloc, the ruling party was, for the first time in a decade, completely outmanoeuvred on the electoral turf.

To compound the BJP’s woes, even its own core voter base of Rajputs and Jats seemed a dispirited lot, the first because it felt neglected and the second not quite enthusiastic about voting for the lotus despite the defection of their leader Jayant Chowdhury to the saffron camp.

There is also persistent speculation in political and media circles that both the RSS cadre in Uttar Pradesh and the powerful Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath did not back the BJP and the Prime Minister wholeheartedly. After all, during the inauguration of the Grand Ram Temple a few months ago, television cameras just focussed on Modi, pointedly ignoring the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, and one cameraman who showed Yogi for five seconds was later reportedly fired. It is also interesting that while the BJP languished in the Ayodhya and Varanasi divisions, it won virtually all the seats in the Gorakhpur division, which is the home bastion of the monk Chief Minister.

Others, however, point out that despite his reported distance from both the Prime Minister Modi and the Home Minister Amit Shah, Yogi strenuously campaigned across Uttar Pradesh during the elections, and there was no question of internal sabotage. As for the RSS, notwithstanding a certain degree of disquiet in the Nagpur-based organisation about the personality cult built by Modi, the top leadership is known to play safe and not take risks that could topple the entire saffron apple cart. Yet, individual RSS leaders and activists disenchanted with a BJP compromised by political defectors and moneybags may not have made the concerted effort required to get the party across the winning line in several constituencies.

(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist and the author of ‘Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati’. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)