New Delhi: As Uttar Pradesh witnessed a bipolar contest in majority of the seats it is the third time that the BJP has emerged victorious in a direct contest as experts say that this suits the party and the reverse consolidation makes it stronger.
In this election, the party was in direct contest with the Samajwadi Party-led alliance as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) did not work at the ground level and the Congress could nor manage a strong ground presence. The contest was thus chiefly between two parties –BJP and SP — and at the end the BJP won the elections.
The voters have been solidly behind the BJP since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, whether in the 2017 Assembly elections, the 2019 parliamentary polls and now again in the 2022 Assembly elections.
In 2014, the BJP fought a multi cornered battle but won as at that time the issue of Muzzaffarnagar riots was a burning issue and the BJP cashed on it. In 2017, the SP-Congress combine was decimated by the BJP and with Prime Minister Narendra Modi leading the election campaign, the BJP swept the polls and won 312 seats, getting more than 39.67 per cent vote share, an increase of 265 seats from 2012. In 2019, the BJP increased its vote share and got more votes than the previous elections to reach 49.98 per cent.
The BJP has been able to produce good results, which may be primarily due to the Hindutva factor. However, laced with social schemes of ration distribution during the Covid pandemic and the direct cash transfers to the farmers helped the BJP.
The March 10 results have proved again the new political culture in the state as the BJP has won 255 seats with more than 41 per cent popular votes, 10 per cent more than the nearest rival, the Samajwadi Party. This proves that the Akhilesh Yadav’s crowd drawing yatras consolidated the BJP votes and even Scheduled caste voters voted for the party as Mayawati remained dormant.
The Hindutva issue is BJPs arsenal against all the odds and has proved the efficacy time and again. When Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said the BJP does not need the 20 per cent votes, in what was seen as a reference to the minority community votes and that the party is happy with 80 per cent, political reactions were triggered. The BJP’s tone for elections was set about 80 vs 20 and the speakers in the public meetings repeatedly talked and targeted the 20 per cent.
The Hindutva tone was backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ and free ration during the pandemic which overshadowed the Covid fiasco. Another contentious issue was cow protection which overshadowed the issue of stray cattle.
But it was the Prime Minister who held the Hindutva fort starting from 2014. Riding on the Hindutva wave after Muzaffarnagar riots, BJP stormed to power winning 71 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh garnering a staggering 42.6 per cent votes, while in the previous election, the party could manage to win only 10.
–IANS
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