Amid reports of a rift between the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) organisation following debacle in the Lok Sabha polls, the monk-turned-politician faces an acid test of getting the saffron party’s mojo back in the forthcoming state assembly bypolls.
UP will witness bypolls on 10 seats even as the BJP, its allies and the opposition camps have already started the groundwork for the crucial contest at the hustings.
The bypolls will pitch the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) against the resurgent INDIA bloc comprising the principal opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) and its bête noire-turned-ally Congress.
Nine UP assembly seats were vacated after the sitting legislators were elected to the LS. These seats are Karhal, Katehari, Kundarki, Khair, Manjhwa, Meerapur, Milkipur, Phulpur and Ghaziabad Sadar.
Another seat Sisamau in Kanpur City district was vacated following the disqualification of sitting SP member of legislative assembly (MLA) Irfan Solanki after being convicted in a criminal case.
The recent meeting of UP deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya and UP unit BJP president Bhupendra Chaudhry with national party president J P Nadda in New Delhi only lent credence to the purported rift between Yogi and Maurya in the state power corridors.
In this backdrop, the bypolls, the dates of which are still not announced, offers a chance to Yogi to prove his leadership and governance plank that aided the BJP win the 2019 Lok Sabha polls as well as the 2022 UP assembly elections.
Moreover, bypolls victory will also prove that the 2024 LS poor show was an aberration rather than a downward slide for the party in UP.
At the same time, the bypolls give an opportunity to the INDIA bloc to up the ante against the ruling dispensation before the 2027 UP assembly elections as also elections in several states later this year.
In 2024 LS polls, the BJP could only scoop 33 of total 80 seats in UP, down from its 2019 tally of 62 seats. The Akhilesh Yadav-led SP won 37 seats, its best Lok Sabha performance, while its ally Congress wrested 6 seats.
Earlier this month, Yogi chaired a meeting to deliberate upon the UP bypolls strategy, asking ministers to interact with the people in these constituencies and resolve the genuine grievances of the party’s local rank and file.
Interestingly, UP deputy CMs Maurya and Brajesh Pathak and a few senior state BJP unit leaders were absent from the meeting.
Meanwhile, senior ministers have been assigned these 10 constituencies to ensure the party’s win by winning the confidence of the electorate.
Of the 10 assembly seats, five are currently held by the SP, three seats rest with the BJP while one each is with two BJP allies viz. NISHAD Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).
In 2022, the SP had won Sisamau, Katehari, Kundarki, Milkipur and Karhal seats, while the BJP won Khair, Phulpur and Ghaziabad. The NISHAD Party and RLD won Manjhwah and Meerapur seats respectively.
According to a senior SP leader, the party had started the process of talking with its local leaders to formulate a strategy to win the seats on the block for the UP assembly bypolls.
“Our leader Akhilesh Yadav ji is talking to the local party leaders in this regard,” she said adding SP was confident of the INDIA bloc winning all the seats in UP.
On the other hand, the ruling BJP is also sanguine of scoring cent percent strike rate in the UP assembly bypolls by scooping all the 10 seats.
“We take every election seriously, and the party has begun the process of due diligence in the run up to the bypolls. The party is confident that the people will support it in the bypolls and help it win all the 10 seats,” a state party unit secretary said.