UP Shocker

Smajawadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party may take some time to come out of this shock.

- Chandrshekhar Shrivastava

After week long deliberation and Holi celebration BJP finally enthroned disputed Yogi Adityanath on the chief ministerial chair of Uttar Pradesh. It is strange that the party could not find even a single candidate from its 312 newly elected MLAs and 13 of its alliance partners suitable to hold this coveted post. Even the chief minister hopeful and BJP state unit chief Keshav Prasad Maurya has to be content with deputy chief minister post.

Now, when Yogi Adityanath has assumed the CM chair, one of party’s MLAs will have to resign and make way for by election for Yogi to be elected as MLA and fulfill the constitutional need to be eligible to hold the chief ministerial chair for a full term.

Journalist and Union minister MJ Akbar in The Times of India on 12 March wrote, “This election was not about religion; it was about India, and the elimination of its inherited curse — poverty. It was about good governance.” Indeed, assemlby election in UP revolved around three main issues – demonetisation, Sushasan (good governance) and development.

Where did Akhilesh go wrong? Insiders and sympathesisers of Smajawadi Party (SP) say that the first mistake Akhilesh made was to confine his focus in urban areas alone. All the development works that his government undertook were mainly focused in big cities, especially Lucknow. Meanwhile, he continued to talk about transforming villages, providing 24-hour electricity and water and all-weather road connectivity to villages. But when villagers made a reality check of his claims, they found that there were no such works in their surroundings. So, why they would vote for him again?