The bypoll results in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, taken together with those last month in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, are suggestive of a pattern that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) cannot afford to ignore. The party will not just have to reassess its ground game — and the impact of policies followed by its governments in the States and at the Centre — it will also have to seriously consider the criticism from its parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, that those in power cannot afford to be arrogant.
Message in the numbers
In 2014, 93 of the BJP’s 282 Lok Sabha seats came from U.P. and Bihar. This was a key reason why the BJP swung into action after it lost the Bihar Assembly elections in 2015 to ‘persuade’ Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), to return to the NDA fold. It cannot therefore afford any setbacks here if it hopes to return to power in 2019.
For the still-divided Opposition, the success of the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ‘understanding’ in breaching Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s citadel of Gorakhpur and winning Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya’s Phulpur seat has created a template for 2019 — fielding a joint candidate against the BJP nominee in as many constituencies as possible. The efficacy of this model was tested in 2015, when the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the JD(U) and the Congress joined hands to defeat the BJP in the Bihar elections, reversing the trends of the Lok Sabha polls of 2014 when the BJP capitalised on the multi-cornered contests.
Now, in Bihar, the BJP-JD(U) combine has turned out to be less formidable than predicted, and the RJD retained the Araria Lok Sabha and Jehanabad Assembly seats. The fact that RJD supremo Lalu Prasad is in jail made little difference to voters who saw the change in government as a betrayal of the 2015 mandate; what made a difference was the way in which his son Tejashwi Yadav managed the campaign, and the last-minute exit of former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who belongs to the poorest Dalit community of Musahars, from the NDA.
The BJP has undoubtedly increased its political footprint since the spectacular victory of 2014. It is in power, on its own or in an alliance, in 21 States. And yet, it has been defeated in a string of Lok Sabha and Assembly bypolls in which its candidates were in direct contest with the winners.
Passing the buck
Today, the BJP — and its apologists — are comforting themselves by saying the defeat of its candidates in U.P. represents a failure of Mr. Adityanath, and is in no way a reflection of voters’ assessment of the Narendra Modi government. Neither Mr. Modi nor BJP President Amit Shah campaigned in this round of elections, they say, as they did in the general elections. Of Bihar, they say, the RJD benefitted from “sympathy” for the incarcerated Mr. Prasad.
But ground reports from Gorakhpur and Phulpur suggest otherwise. Dalits, for instance, not just in U.P. but across the country, have been seeking an option after rising instances of anti-Dalit violence. BSP sources say there was pressure “from below on Behenji (BSP chief Mayawati)” to extend support to the SP as there was no BSP candidate in the fray. When Ms. Mayawati told her cadres to defeat the BJP, they did so with enthusiasm. In fact, anti-BJP discontent is being expressed along many axes. The middle class, which tends to be a votary of the BJP, is feeling the pinch with the economic slowdown. Brahmins in U.P. are said to be unhappy that Thakurs, led by Mr. Adityanath, are getting prized government postings. Traders of all stripes, having been hit first by demonetisation, are reeling under the impact of the Goods and Services Tax rollout.
More importantly, the caste alliance that the BJP so carefully stitched together for 2014 and 2017 has come apart. The BJP’s alliance partner in U.P. is Apna Dal, a Kurmi party; yet the SP’s Kurmi candidate defeated the BJP’s Kurmi candidate in Phulpur. In Gorakhpur, the SP shattered the BJP’s most backward caste coalition by fielding Pravin Nishad, who belongs to a backward community and is the son of Sanjay Nishad, who heads the Nishad Party that enjoys wide support in the Gorakhpur belt. In short, the SP and the BSP have reached out, and successfully for now, to their old following among the most backward castes. Over the years, the SP, from being a coalition of backward castes, had shrunk into a party of Yadavs. Similarly, the BSP had lost most of its backward caste leaders in the run-up to the 2017 U.P. polls, and was limited to a party of Jatavs, to which Ms. Mayawati belongs.
Clearly, there are many lessons in these elections. The BJP will doubtless pay heed to the message sent out by voters, but what of the Opposition? Will its leaders show the statesmanship to sink their differences, overcome their egos and build on the beginning that the SP and BSP — despite a bad history — have made? Only a grand alliance will be able to take on the might of the BJP in 2019.
Smita Gupta is a Delhi-based journalist
