This is a translated and edited excerpt from a longer conversation on the What does this mean Podcast with Amit Yadav on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) election review meeting in Uttar Pradesh. To listen to the full episode on Spotify, click here, and for the app, click here.
Three main reasons for BJP’s losses in Uttar Pradesh (UP):
1. Poor distribution of inputs
The BJP repeated many of its previous candidates. The minimal changes it introduced were also quite bad.
For example, in districts like Ghaziabad, Meerut and Gautam Buddh Nagar, the party usually fields one candidate each from the Brahmin, Baniya and Rajput communities.
However, this time, two of the three seats were awarded to Baniya candidates, creating an anti-Rajput atmosphere that persisted till the final phase of the election.
Similarly, in other seats, the party ignored regional dynamics and public discontent with incumbent candidates.
In regions like Devipatan, Ayodhya and Basti, which are predominantly Kurmi, the BJP did not field a single Kurmi candidate, fuelling an anti-Kurmi narrative that even affected Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s seat, a Kurmi-dominant Vidhan Sabha seat, resulting in a smaller margin of victory compared to the previous Lok Sabha elections.
2. Absence of Sangathan on the ground and central control
If the BJP central leadership had given the state government a free hand to form a team and work hard, perhaps we would have seen a different outcome today.
Of course, if they had not achieved results, the central leadership could have intervened and taken action against them.
However, the truth is that all the important decisions relating to the UP Lok Sabha elections were under the control of the central leadership.
Moreover, the induction of leaders from other parties into the BJP was not welcomed. In 2017, it was understandable to give positions and power to leaders from outside the BJP, but in 2022, it was not necessary.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath enjoys immense popularity in the state and people voted for him and his government. And they did, resulting in the BJP’s landslide victory in the state.
For example, Jitin Prasada was given the Public Works Department within a year of his joining and OP Rajbhar was given the Panchayati Raj Ministry. Both these ministries are important.
A leader like Dara Singh Chauhan, who created an anti-BJP and anti-Other Backward Classes (OBC) narrative and later joined the Samajwadi Party, was welcomed back into the BJP, and also lost his seat during the assembly by-elections.
We saw the party organisation openly blaming the state government and bureaucracy for the party’s poor performance. But this blame game is because the Sangatan They did not make any effort and now they only want to save face and continue to maintain their powerful positions.
The main reason for the BJP’s defeat was the attitude of the party organisation, which did not hold any meeting with the public on the ground.
Moreover, many leaders of the organisation who were appointed by the central leadership of the party have direct access to the high command in Delhi and hence have no accountability or responsibility to the state leadership and the government.
This conveys to other leaders within the organization that state leadership has limited influence over decisions, leading them to perceive it as powerless.
3. High dependence on Modi-Yogi factor for votes
The BJP believed that it could win the elections in Uttar Pradesh based solely on the Modi-Yogi appeal. Therefore, it made the following mistakes:
– They did not change candidates to address the fight against the current government.
– The party organization did not work hard on the ground.
– The party failed to counter the anti-reservation and anti-Constitution narratives spread by the opposition.
The party organisation’s overconfidence and over-dependence on the Modi-Yogi appeal cost the BJP dearly.
A national election, which people saw as the election of Narendra Modi as their prime minister, ended up becoming an election in which people voted to elect local candidates to power.
