LUCKNOW: BJP's Chandra Bhanu Paswan, a ground-level worker of the ruling party, defeated Samajwadi Party’s Ajit Prasad, son of Faizabad MP Awadhesh Prasad by a margin of 61,710 votes in a high-stake electoral battle in Milkipur.
The Milkipur bypoll was necessitated after SP MLA Awadhesh Prasad vacated it following his election to Lok Sabha from Faizabad in 2024.
The Mayawati-led BSP did not contest the bypoll while the Congress backed SP as an INDIA bloc ally.
The BJP has won the Milkipur seat a total of three times including the just-concluded elections as the constituency has a sizeable population of Dalits, Muslims and Yadavs. The party won the seat previously in 2017 and 1991.
BJP's victory in Milkipur is significant to both the BJP and the SP.
While the BJP celebrates the win as a comeback since its defeat in Faizabad in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the result is a wake-up call for the SP.
The BJP has been toiling to regain lost ground in Ayodhya after SP wrested the Faizabad seat from the party last year.
While a significant chunk of Yadav voters shifted towards the BJP, the turnout of Muslim voters considered to be loyal supporters of SP was comparatively low in Milkipur.
The low turnout was an indication to the departure of the Muslims from their customary pattern of heavy polling engagement.
Moreover, the SP's strong Brahmin leadership proved to be a handicap in mobilising the Brahmin voters in Milkipur where Brahmins make a strong 85,000 chunk of total 3.70 lakh electorate.
While the bypoll result appears to have undermined the credibility of SP's PDA (Pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) strategy, it was apparently the over-arching community outreach of the BJP that helped it to make inroads into every community, including Dalits, OBC and the upper caste to emerge victorious.
The SP also banked on the local popularity of Awadhesh Prasad, who won the seat in 2012 and 2022 while losing it only once in 2017 to BJP's Baba Gorakhnath.
CM Yogi Adityanath termed BJP's victory as a symbol of the unwavering faith of the common people in public welfare policies of 'Double Engine BJP Government' led by PM Modi and the dedicated UP government.
"Congratulations to Chandrabhanu Paswan and hearty greetings to the people of Milkipur who gave their votes to the development oriented and good governance of Uttar Pradesh!" he posted on X account.
Meanwhile, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, however, debunked BJP's win as a "false victory".
"The BJP will never be able to celebrate if it will do the introspection. Their guilt and fear of future defeat will keep them awake," he posted on his X account.
The SP chief said that the true victory of the PDA in Ayodhya in the Lok Sabha elections was much "heavier" than their “false victory” in the Milkipur assembly.
With the Milkipur win, BJP now stands winning eight of those 10 assembly segments which were vacated by the sitting MLAs after their election to Lok Sabha in 2024.
The bypoll to nine seats was held in November, last year. The BJP had wrested two seats – Katehari in Ambedkarnagar and Muslim dominated Kundarki in Moradabad-- from SP kitty winning seven of the nine. SP could get just two—Sisamau in Kanpur and its stronghold Karhal in Mainpuri.