LUCKNOW: Can development projects worth more than ₹38,000 crore help the BJP regain ground in 115 Uttar Pradesh assembly constituencies where its electoral position shifted significantly between the 2022 assembly election and the 2024 Lok Sabha polls? That question lies at the heart of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's latest outreach across the state, as political parties begin preparing for the 2027 assembly election.
Since May, Adityanath has visited more than 44 of Uttar Pradesh's 75 districts, inaugurating or laying foundation stones for projects covering roads, schools, hospitals, electricity, water supply, panchayat infrastructure, tourism and skill development.
The 115 constituencies form an important part of the BJP's strategy ahead of 2027. Their significance lies in the contrast between the 2022 assembly results and the 2024 Lok Sabha outcome.
In 2022, the BJP won 71 of these 115 seats. Its allies, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and Nishad Party, won three and two respectively, taking the alliance's tally to 76. The Samajwadi Party (SP) won 33, while its allies, RLD and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, took three and two seats respectively, with Congress winning one.
Two years later, the picture looked markedly different when the same assembly segments were mapped against the 2024 Lok Sabha results. The SP led in 54 segments, Congress in 13, the BJP in 47 and RLD in one. Together, the SP-Congress alliance led in 67 of the 115 segments.
These were Lok Sabha segment-level leads rather than assembly seats won, but they offer a useful indication of where the BJP's position weakened during the general election. For the BJP, therefore, the exercise is less about announcing projects in isolation and more about shoring up areas exposed as vulnerable in 2024.
Rae Bareli offers one example. On August 24, Adityanath visited the Lok Sabha constituency represented by Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, inaugurating or laying foundation stones for projects worth ₹879 crore across the Bachhrawan, Harchandpur and Rae Bareli assembly segments. Congress had led in all three in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. In the 2022 assembly polls, however, the BJP had won Rae Bareli, while the SP took Bachhrawan and Harchandpur.
Mainpuri and Karhal offer another test. In July, the chief minister announced projects worth ₹682 crore covering the two segments. Karhal has traditionally been an SP stronghold, represented by Akhilesh Yadav after the 2022 election, and the party also led there and in Mainpuri in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP's focus is not confined to traditional SP pockets. The 115 constituencies span 43 Lok Sabha seats across western Uttar Pradesh, central UP and Purvanchal — including ₹810 crore of projects covering Rudauli and Bikapur, and more than ₹4,000 crore across parts of Gorakhpur district. The spread means the government's development pitch is reaching constituencies with differing political histories, caste configurations and local concerns.
But scale alone will not decide the outcome.
For a voter in a village, a road project's political value depends on whether connectivity has actually improved; a hospital project matters only if people can access doctors, medicines and treatment; a water scheme matters if households receive a reliable supply; a skill-development centre matters if it translates into jobs or better livelihoods. That is where the government's narrative will face its sharpest test.
The BJP can point to the scale of investment and its record in office, while opposition parties will question whether projects announced or inaugurated ahead of the election are producing visible change in people's daily lives. Their timing and delivery are likely to become part of the wider political contest as 2027 approaches.
The BJP is increasingly presenting the Yogi government's governance record as central to its 2027 campaign, alongside intensified outreach to specific groups including farmers, fishermen, ex-servicemen, former Agniveers, lawyers, fair-price shop dealers and panchayat-level workers.
Development alone, however, may not determine how voters in these seats behave. Young voters, for instance, may judge the government by a different set of measures — recruitment, competitive examinations, education, private-sector employment and entrepreneurship opportunities — issues that have remained prominent in political mobilisation among students and young voters in the state. Farmers may weigh procurement, irrigation, input costs and farm incomes more heavily than roads or government buildings, while urban voters could focus on traffic, pollution, housing, electricity, public transport and municipal services.
This makes constituency-level analysis particularly important.
In an SP stronghold such as Karhal, the question is whether government projects can shift an entrenched political preference. In a Congress pocket such as Rae Bareli, the issue is whether development can change the conversation in an area where Congress led all three assembly segments in 2024. In western UP, caste equations, farmers' issues and local leadership could interact with development; in Purvanchal, roads, healthcare, employment and migration are likely to carry greater weight.
Political analyst Dr Shashikant Pandey, head of the political science department at Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, says the 2024 Lok Sabha result should not be treated as a direct predictor of the 2027 assembly election, since the two contests involve different issues, candidates, alliances and voting patterns.
The 2024 result, in other words, offers an electoral reference point rather than a forecast. The BJP's decision to concentrate development and political attention on constituencies where it lost ground in 2024 signals an effort to address those vulnerabilities directly. Whether that shifts voter preference will depend on how people judge government delivery, local issues and political alternatives closer to the election.
The opposition faces its own challenge: converting the SP-Congress alliance's 2024 performance in these seats into sustained assembly-level organisation. The 67-segment figure is a snapshot from the Lok Sabha election and does not by itself guarantee a repeat performance in 2027.
The scale of the BJP's intervention is nonetheless notable, with its development programme increasingly visible in constituencies that formed part of the opposition's 2024 success. The real question is not how much money has been announced or how many districts the chief minister has visited, but whether voters see tangible improvement in their lives.
The BJP is seeking to make development and governance central to its 2027 pitch; the opposition will look to keep voters focused on employment, representation, local grievances and the delivery of government schemes.
For the BJP, the constituencies represent an important test of whether the shift visible in the 2024 Lok Sabha election can be reversed before the next assembly polls. The numbers underline the scale of that challenge: the BJP and its allies held 76 of these 115 seats in 2022, yet the SP-Congress alliance led in 67 of the same segments two years later in the Lok Sabha election.
Whether the BJP can change that equation by 2027 will depend not on the number of projects inaugurated, but on whether voters in these constituencies believe the government has delivered something tangible. The real battle over the 115 seats, then, is moving from government files and foundation stones to the ground — where voters will decide whether development has changed their political mood.
