AKHILESH PUTS YOGI ON THE MAT

The Congress-SP alliance in Uttar Pradesh has done the unimaginable-turned the tide against the BJP by halving its Lok Sabha tally and endangering its prospects in the next state election

- Prashant Srivastava

"UP ne kamaal kar diya (UP did an incredible thing)....” That was Congress leader Rahul Gandhi when asked about the Lok Sabha result in Uttar Pradesh. It is, in fact, the “UP ke ladke”, as Rahul and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav are fondly called in UP, who have managed to do the ‘incredible’, stun the BJP despite the Ram temple and the Modi-Yogi double engine hype.

The Congress-SP alliance won 43 of UP’s 80 Lok Sabha seats (SP 37 and Congress six), restricting the BJP-led NDA to just 36 seats in the state, a feat that has huge ramifications. UP had propelled Narendra Modi’s rise to power in 2014, sending 71 BJP MPs to the Lok Sabha; in 2019, it helped him consolidate his grip by electing 62 party candidates, along with two of ally Apna Dal (S). This time, UP was meant to set the ball rolling for an even larger mandate, but that was not to be. Prime Minister Modi’s own victory margin of 152,513 votes in Varanasi—less than a third of the 479,000-odd he got in 2019—was prime evidence of how the BJP had lost the plot in UP.

SAFFRON GETS A SHOCK

Of the 12 members of the Union cabinet who contested again in UP, only five managed a return ticket to Parliament, among them PM Modi and defence minister Rajnath Singh. The list of those who fell by the wayside includes Smriti Irani in Amethi, Ajay Mishra Teni (whose son allegedly mowed down four people during the anti-farm laws protest) in Kheri and Sanjeev Balyan (an accused in the 2013 riots) in Muzaffarnagar. Irani’s defeat summed up the anti-BJP sentiment in some seats. She lost to Gandhi family loyalist Kishori Lal Sharma—who had been informed he was contesting just a day before the nominations—by over 167,000 votes.