LUCKNOW: After facing a humiliating defeat in recent Lok Sabha polls, the ruling BJP managed to salvage its pride by sweeping the bypoll to nine assembly constituencies winning seven of them on Saturday.
The main opposition Samajwadi Party, led by Akhilesh Yadav, had to be satisfied with just two seats conceding two from its kitty to the ruling party.
The voting for the nine seats had taken place on Wednesday. The BJP alliance not only retained the five seats it had won in the 2022 polls but also won two additional assembly seats - Kundarki in Moradabad and Katehri in Ambedkarnagar - which the SP had won in 2022 assembly polls.
While Moradabad’s Kundarki, the stronghold of senior SP leader late Shafiqur Rehman Barq, is a Muslim-dominated seat, Katehri in Ambedkar Nagar has a substantial chunk of Dalit voters. Kundarki was vacated by sitting SP MLA Ziaur Rehman Barq, the great-grandson of Shafiqur Rehman Barq, as he got elected to Lok Sabha from Sambhal, Katehari was vacated by SP MLA Lalji Verma who won from Ambedkarnagar in Lok Sabah election.
While winning Kundarki and Katehari add weight to BJP’s ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vishwas’ narrative and Yogi Adityanath’s “Batenge toh Katenge” call, re-establishing his electoral prowess, the loss has come as a jolt to the Samajwadi Party and its PDA narrative which failed to impress the voters in its stronghold like Kundarki. Moreover, the BJP’s victory in Kundarki, which has Muslim voters in the majority, has given a reflection of the changing political landscape in Uttar Pradesh where the Muslim voters have backed the ruling party in a respectable number this time.
The BJP candidate Ramvir Singh has won the Kundarki seat by a huge margin of 1.45 lakh votes defeating Mohammad Rizwan, a two-time MLA, of the SP.
Similarly, in Katehari, the lotus bloomed after three decades. BJP’s Dharmraj Nishad won the seat by a margin of around 35,000 votes defeating Shobhawati Verma of SP.
The other seats that the BJP bagged included Phulpur (Prayagraj), Khair (Aligarh), Ghaziabad Sadar (Ghaziabad), and Majhawan (Mirzapur). BJP ally Rastriya Lok Dal (RLD) of Jayant Chaudhury, retained its prowess in Meerapur thus consolidating its position in BJP-led NDA.
In Meerapur, the RLD's Mithlesh Pal (the BP candidate contesting of RLD symbol) won by over 30,000 votes from the SP's Sumbul Rana. The seat was won by the RLD, by Chandan Chauhan, in the last election. However, Kundarki and Katehari losses have put a question mark on the notion, which gained weight after Lok Sabah polls, that the Samajwadi Party has emerged as the next best choice of Dalit voters who had drifted away first from the BSP gravitating towards the BJP in 2014.
In 2024, they seemed to have deserted BJP also voting in favour of SP. At the same time, having put up an impressive show in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls by winning 37 of the 80 seats, the Samajwadi Party managed to retain its first family stronghold of Karhal in Mainpuri and Sisamau in Kanpur which has a substantial Muslim vote base.
In Karhal, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s nephew Tej Pratap Yadav defeated his kin and BJP candidate Anujesh Yadav by a margin of approximately 15, 000 votes. The seat was vacated by Akhilesh after getting elected to Lok Sabha from Kannauj. The Ghaziabad seat has remained with the BJP as its candidate Sanjeev Sharma retained it for the party by defeating SP's Singh Raj Jatav by over 63,000 votes. The BJP also retained Khair where Surender Diler defeated his SP rival Charu Kain by nearly 40,000 votes.
In Phulpur, BJP’s Deepak Patel defeated SP’s Mohd Siddique by around 12,000 votes. The BJP registered a win in Majhawan where Shuchismita Maurya drubbed Dr Jyoti Bind of the SP by a slender margin of 5,000 votes. This seat was won by the NISHAD Party, another BJP ally, in 2022.
After the results, UP CM Yogi Adityanath posted a triumphant message on microblogging site X. "Victory of BJP-NDA in UP Assembly bypolls is a testament to people's unwavering faith in the successful leadership and guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This victory is the result of the security, good governance, and public welfare policies of the double-engine government and hard work of dedicated workers. I express my gratitude to the respected voters of UP," he said in his post in Hindi.
Significantly, the Chief Minister finished his post with the contentious 'katenge to batenge' war cry that has been fiercely criticised by the opposition for being communal.