The defeat in UP has shocked the BJP and caused it to lose its majority in the Lok Sabha. After this, the party sent its senior leaders including Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath back to the drawing board. The roles of the party’s state and central leaders will also come under the scanner as the party goes through the exercise of reviewing the results.
BJP has won only 33 out of total 80 seats in the state. Last time it won in 62 seats. Due to this defeat of BJP, grumblings within the ranks are increasing. Samajwadi Party won 37 seats in this election.
Adityanath is understood to have taken permission from the leadership to initiate the review during his two-day visit to Delhi. He reached the capital on Thursday evening and met senior leaders including party president JP Natta.
After attending the NDA parliamentary party meeting on Friday, Adityanath reportedly held another two-hour closed-door meeting with the party leadership, where the prime minister along with Natta Narendra Modi Union Ministers Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh were present.
Among those whose holdings will be under the scanner and expected to submit detailed reports, U.P. Top ministers of the government and their counterparts, along with the chief minister and deputy chief minister, were given the responsibility of individual districts for the spread last year.
Some of them are from Eastern, Western and Central UP. Brahmins in the regions also took on the task of managing caste equations in constituencies among Thakurs, Bhumihars, Banias and OBCs.
Many BJPs have already started talking openly about “domestic sabotage”, apart from their failure to effectively counter the opposition’s propaganda of “constitutional threat” and “low voter turnout among Hindus”.
BJP’s Rampur candidate Ghanshyam Singh Lodhi attributed his defeat mainly to “polarization on religious lines” and accused some party leaders of being “uncooperative”. “Party organization has been informed about them. The party and I are conducting a detailed study together,” he said.
BJP’s Sambal candidate Parameshwar Lal Saini attributed his defeat to SP’s Zia ur Rehman to consolidation of Muslim votes in favor of the SP-Congress alliance and “low number of Hindu voters”. While Saini is an OBC leader, Rehman is the grandson of long-time former SP MP Shafiqur Rehman Park, who died while being awarded the seat.
Other places where party leaders were blamed for the defeat of BJP candidates were Union Ministers fielded again – Kheri (Ajay Mishra ‘Theni’), Amethi (Smriti Irani), Fatehpur (Niranjan Jyoti), Chandoli (Mahendra Nath Pandey), and Muzaffarnagar (Sanjiv Kumar Palyan).
Allegations of vandalism were also reported in Basti, Barabanki, Faizabad, Sultanpur, Allahabad, Kausambi, Patan and Sitapur. In constituencies like Gari, Muzaffarnagar and Fatehpur, it has been alleged that local MLAs and office bearers do not even come out to campaign for candidates for personal or local reasons.
