Yogi’s mid-term test in Uttar Pradesh

The just-concluded byelections in nine Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh have attracted unusual media attention. This could perhaps be attributed to the fact that many see the byelections as a referendum on the future of Chief Minister Adityanath, whom many in the BJP consider the most popular leader after Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The outcome will also determine whether the 2024 Lok Sabha result, which saw the Samajwadi Party (SP) rising as a force to reckon with once again in Uttar Pradesh, marked a permanent shift in the State’s politics.

Political analyst Sharat Pradhan, who has followed Uttar Pradesh politics closely and co-authored the book Yogi Adityanath: Religion, Politics and Power, The Untold Story, told Frontline that no byelection has ever drawn as much attention from the ruling dispensation as these elections have.

“Thanks to Adityanath, these byelections have become a matter of prestige for both the BJP and the opposition, which is represented largely by the SP. The reason is not far to seek: BJP bigwigs in Delhi are believed to have linked Adityanath’s future to the byelections outcome. The Modi-Shah duo is known to have held him responsible for the party’s poor show in the Lok Sabha election, which left the BJP relegated to the number-two position in the country’s most populous State. Amit Shah is believed to have always perceived Adityanath as the biggest obstacle in the way of realising his dream of emerging as Modi’s ‘rightful’ successor, and BJP leaders in Delhi seemed quite inclined to move him out of Lucknow. But Adityanath managed to save his skin by seeking the good offices of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. It is widely believed that the final deal was that he would be given another chance to prove himself in the byelections,” Pradhan said. No wonder Adityanath moved heaven and earth to project himself as the “biggest Hindu Hriday Samrat”, he remarked.

Pradhan also pointed out that in the 2022 Assembly election, the BJP won only three of the 10 seats where byelections became necessary (byelections were held in nine of them), and its allies won two. The SP, on the other hand, had won five.

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Adityanath was indeed the most visible Chief Minister during the campaign for the byelections. No matter what his equations are with the party bosses in Delhi, the BJP clearly cannot afford to ignore him. He campaigned extensively in a number of NDA-ruled States, particularly where the chips were down for the saffron alliance, and his usual polarising tactics were on full display. In Maharashtra, where he addressed 11 public meetings, his “batenge toh katenge” (divided we fall) slogan aimed at consolidating Hindu votes raised hackles not only among the opposition parties but even within the BJP. In Jharkhand too, where he addressed 13 rallies, he stirred up a controversy with his provocative statements.

The spotlight, however, is on Uttar Pradesh, which sends 80 Members of Parliament (MPs) to the Lok Sabha, with the outcome expected to impact the political future of not only Adityanath but also that of his party.

Adityanath addressed 13 election rallies and held two roadshows—an unusual effort for just nine Assembly seats in a State with 403, especially since no byelection was announced for the Milkipur Assembly segment of Ayodhya. This seat fell vacant after Samajwadi Party MLA Awadhesh Prasad won the Ayodhya Lok Sabha seat, delivering a significant jolt to the BJP.

It was also not as if the outcome would impact the government’s majority in the Assembly, where the BJP had 255 members. The Congress had just two seats and the SP was a distant second with 105. Yet, the byelection outcome was expected to have a ripple effect for the State’s politics.

The Congress chose not to field candidates against the SP after seat-sharing talks fell through, making it a direct BJP versus SP contest. Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party fielded candidates in all nine seats. Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) tried its luck in three seats including Ghaziabad, which incidentally had the maximum number of candidates—14.

Blame on party leadership

The SP-Congress alliance walked away with 44 seats in the recent Lok Sabha election (the SP got 37; the Congress, seven). The saffron party got 33, marking a dramatic decline from the 71 seats it won in 2014 and 62 in 2019. Modi’s third term was robbed of the glow of the brute majority that marked his previous terms, making the government dependent on support from the Telugu Desam Party and the Janata Dal (United). Soon, a blame game followed with some pointing fingers at the party’s central leadership, which had apparently chosen the candidates.

“Adityanath’s hands were tied,” went the refrain as there were whispers of an intense tug of war between the Chief Minister and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who had allegedly thrown his weight behind some rebel State leaders. Though the party leadership dismissed all this as rumour-mongering, Adityanath reportedly faced an internal rebellion for months after the Lok Sabha results were out. But he got a free hand in picking candidates for the byelections and in the campaigning.

In August, he deployed 30 Ministers and 15 other senior party leaders as “caretakers” in the poll-bound seats and assigned cluster-wise responsibilities to them. The party organised “gram chaupals” for last-mile connection with the voters. Still betting on Hindu consolidation and the “Ayodhya effect”, it organised “Ayodhya Deepotsava” on October 30, lighting 25 lakh diyas along the Saryu river.

The seats where byelections were held were Ghaziabad in the National Capital Region, Sisamau in Kanpur, Meerapur in Muzaffarnagar, Phulpur in Prayagraj, Karhal in Mainpuri, Khair in Aligarh, Katehari in Ambedkar Nagar, Majhawan in Mirzapur, and Kundarki in Moradabad. Eight of these seats fell vacant as the sitting legislators got elected as MPs.

The SP won four of these in 2022—Karhal, Katehari, Kundarki and Sisamu; the BJP won Ghaziabad, Phulpur and Khair, and its ally NISHAD Party won Majhawan. Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which had won Meerapur, is now with the NDA. So the NDA has to win at least five of the nine seats if it wants to claim to have retained all its seats.

A byelection for the Sisamau Assembly seat became a necessity after Irfan Solanki, the SP MLA, was convicted in a criminal case.

The BJP fielded candidates in eight seats, leaving one for its ally RLD. Adityanath has often faced criticism for allegedly ignoring Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Dalits, but this time he tried to counter the SP’s PDA pitch─pichchda (OBC), Dalit (Scheduled Castes), and alpsankhyak (minority). The BJP fielded four OBC and one Dalit candidate in the byelections, a move that also probably marked an attempt to silence dissenters within the party and create a parallel OBC leadership within the State unit.

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This time, the BJP also depended on party veterans and their kin to win. Former MP Rajveer Diler’s son Surendra Diler contested from Khair and former MLA Deepak Patel (whose mother was a former MP) from Phulpur. In Katehari, the BJP fielded three-term MLA and former BSP leader Dharmraj Nishad.

Future strategies

The Assembly byelection outcome will indicate whether the BJP will change its course ahead of the 2027 Assembly election in the State, when it will seek a third straight term. It will also determine whether the party will stick to Adityanath as its chief ministerial face.

Political commentator and author Rasheed Kidwai told Frontline that the byelections were “a litmus test for Chief Minister Adityanath and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav”. “If the BJP fails to get six seats in the byelections, the clamour for Adityanath’s removal, currently spearheaded by Keshav Prasad Maurya, will continue. Behind the scenes, Adityanath also faces stiff opposition from a section of the BJP at the national level that views him as Modi’s possible successor in 2029 or earlier. According to this school of thought, if Adityanath retains Uttar Pradesh in 2027 and gets a third term as chief minister in the country’s most populous and politically significant State, his claim as Modi’s successor would become substantially stronger,” Kidwai said.