Lucknow: Yogi Adityanath may have emerged as a star campaigner for the BJP in Assembly elections, but the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister has not been able to ensure bypoll victories for the saffron in his own state.
The party has lost three Lok Sabha and one Assembly seat in five bypolls held in the politically significant state since Yogi took over as the CM. The lone exception is the Sikandara Assembly seat in Kanpur Dehat area, which was the first bypoll to be held in Yogis tenure. The seat was vacated after the death of BJP MLA Mathura Pal Singh and was retained by his son Ajeet Pal Singh in by-elections held in December. BJP’s Ajit Pal Singh polled 73,325 votes to defeat the Samajwadi Party’s Seema Sachan (61,455).
From then on, the saffron party’s fortunes have dwindled in the state. The first big jolt was the loss in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, the Lok Sabha seats vacated by Yogi and deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. The twin bypolls saw BSP chief Mayawati teaming up with rival Samajwadi Party against the BJP.
In Gorakhpur, SP’s Pravin Kumar Nishad defeated BJP’s Upendra Dutt Shukla by 21,881 votes, while in Phulpur SP leader Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel bagged 3,42,922 votes against BJP's Kaushalendra Singh Patel, who got 2,83,462 votes.
Questions were raised over the Yogi Adityanath government’s popularity as the CM had extensively campaigned in Gorakhpur, the home of his Hindu Yuva Vahini. The BJP tried to save face, claiming that voters did not turn up in huge numbers.
In Kairana and Noorpur, the saffron party was again outdone by the caste calculation of the SP-RLD combine which also had the backing of the Congress and the BSP.
Speaking to News18, Samajwadi Party spokesperson Abdul Hafeez Gandhi said, “The results in Kairana and Noorpur make it quite clear that the BJP has not delivered what it promised. It’s policies have been anti-farmer and anti-people. That’s why despite the sympathy factor, they lost.”
Gandhi was referring to the candidature of Mriganka Singh, the daughter of the late MP Hukum Singh.
“It is high time for the BJP to reconsider the leadership of Yogi Adityanath. One more important factor that has emerged after these results is that importance of regional parties cannot be ignored at any cost. The coalition of regional parties is here to stay.”
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