Can the BJP recover in Uttar Pradesh?

Yogi government faces the challenge of regaining disgruntled urban voters while wooing OBCs and Dalits who rejected it in the Lok Sabha election.

A house in Mirzapur Mafi village, Faizabad, that was demolished to make way for the four-lane Parikrama marg coming up on the outer circle of Ayodhya on June 10. | Photo Credit: SANDEEP SAXENA

Akhilesh Yadav has the relaxed demeanour of the political giant killer that he proved to be in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The former Chief Minister and Samajwadi Party (SP) chief knows his place in the sun and shares insights with ease. In contrast, the ruling BJP in Uttar Pradesh is tied up in knots as the party’s leaders admit they had no clue what was coming (the BJP won 33 of the State’s 80 seats and the SP won 37). There is also no clarity about future equations, be it in the party’s State unit or between Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the national BJP, where Home Minister Amit Shah continues to reign supreme.

So when we tracked down Lallu Singh, the two-term BJP MP from Faizabad (the seat that includes Ayodhya), who spectacularly lost to the SP’s Dalit veteran Awadhesh Prasad, all he would say was that he had nothing to say. His silence was revealing, as was the extreme caution about not being quoted in any media or social media outlets. Over the years, as Faizabad MP and earlier as an MLA for five terms, Lallu Singh, whose origins are in the RSS, has been an accessible political figure. But this historic defeat at the epicentre of Hindutva mobilisation has silenced him, presumably because it is not clear which level of the party leadership is to be blamed, the national wing that bet all on the Ram Mandir or the State wing that actually handled the ground-level arrangements.

Discontent in Ayodhya

However, other voices were heard loudly in Ayodhya: BJP supporters, loyalists, and workers spoke openly of the constant harassment that followed the build-up to, and the aftermath of, the January 22 inauguration of the Ram Mandir. Pandit Shiv Das, who has voted for the BJP all his life and attended the temple inauguration, said that the people of Ayodhya were harassed by the police and the bureaucracy. VIP zones were created, lands taken, and properties bulldozed, and it became difficult for residents to even move about freely.

Das also explained how small-scale industries lost out. For instance, earlier local people made and sold diyas from handcarts at the temples, but their livelihoods have now been destroyed, with all temple-associated businesses going to outsiders and big contractors. At a khadi store stacked with “Jai Shri Ram” stoles, a resident told us that what happened on Ram Navami this year (April 17), should have sent out warning signals. Most of the laddoos prepared in anticipation of several lakh visitors on that day had to be thrown away because people just could not reach Ayodhya and many did not even attempt to come as the town has stopped being a place for ordinary pilgrims.

These complaints come from sections that are loyal to the BJP, and are mostly dominant caste. Of the five Assembly segments that constitute the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, the BJP was behind in four but ahead by a few thousand votes in the Ayodhya city segment. Beyond the disaster in Ayodhya, a larger story played out across the State: OBCs and a section of Dalits voted against the BJP. The SP’s groundwork for nearly two years on what it called the PDA (pichda, or backward caste; Dalit; and alpasankhyak ,or minority) coalition paid off.

Byelections for 10 Assembly seats are due in October-November, and the BJP will be hoping that the people’s anger has been assuaged and that some dominant caste and urban voters who did not cast their vote will return, now that the party is in a crisis. It is also looking for a shift in the OBC and Dalit vote. While Adityanath has been given a free hand, there is anxiety here, at a time when the subaltern groups are shifting away from the BJP, as he is from the dominant Thakur caste. Akhilesh Yadav has raised the issue of the rape and murder of two Dalit teenagers who were found hanging in Farrukhabad, and begun a campaign to say the BJP is fundamentally anti-women, besides being anti-OBC and anti-Dalit.

Back to basics for the BJP

Still, Adityanath will use the administrative machinery in every possible way. For the BJP it is back to basics on every front, such as displaying anti-Muslim bias through rhetoric, policy, and harping on the community getting special treatment when it is actually being targeted. The psych-ops of so-called Hindu victimhood are currently in full flow since the BJP’s politics at the elemental level begins and ends with obsessing over and targeting Muslims.

The SP and the Congress are on an entirely different tack, demanding a caste census and the expansion of reserved categories. The SP has been diligent in highlighting examples of reserved jobs going to general category candidates and large-scale corruption in land allotment in Ayodhya. Former MLA and local SP leader Pawan Pandey has tirelessly highlighted cases of villagers not getting adequate compensation for lands, such as those acquired for the airport in Ayodhya, and of big builders “with Gujarat connections” getting prized lands for a song.

The other crisis confronting the BJP comes through when talking to villagers in Mohanlalganj, a reserved Lok Sabha seat on the outskirts of Lucknow. The BJP was defeated here despite a very efficient outreach of free rations to households to get the labharthi (beneficiary) vote. The working-class families here did receive free rations, but they consider it their right and not largesse from the Modi/Yogi regime. As one of them quipped: “Are we dogs at whom they throw rotis? Or the bandua mazdoor [bonded labour] of Dilli Raja and Lucknow Maharaja?”

It is a lesson in itself that in the Mohanlalganj seat, a two-term Pasi Dalit MP of the BJP, Kaushal Kishore, was defeated. Ironically, a Pasi Dalit (Awadhesh Kumar) triumphed in Faizabad. This is the reality in the part of Uttar Pradesh referred to as Awadh. At one of the stops on the road from Lucknow to Allahabad that passes Rae Bareli, an old wizened farmer, Lalla, who voted for the Congress in the Unchahar segment of the Rae Bareli seat, said: “We did what we had to.” Life is difficult and hopes of jobs have dimmed, while falling sick is a disaster in the face of the poor public health infrastructure in the State.

So, when the cup brimmeth over with bad news, there is to be a crackdown on its dissemination. Adityanath’s new social media policy enforces stringent punishment, such as a life-term, for content deemed abusive and “anti-national” and tries to promote “positive content” offering payment up to Rs.8 lakh to those who create videos, posts, or tweets about the achievements of the regime. If it was not so terrible, it would be hilarious. Now paid influencers will get paid more to praise the Adityanath regime, even as ordinary folks and the media could be harassed for even a critique. It sounds like North Korea, but it is the republic of Uttar Pradesh, where the ruling party has been badly jolted.

Saba Naqvi is a Delhi-based journalist and author of four books who writes on politics and identity issues.