Was it Akhilesh's arrogance that proved costly in UP?

As Bharatiya Janata Party is all set to retain power in Uttar Pradesh, a festive noise ruled the BJP office in Lucknow. In contrast, there is a deathly silence in the Samajwadi Party office. A handful of party workers were loitering outside the closed main gate of the party. “BJP has rigged the election. They have changed EVMs at many places. The outcome of this election has shocked us. No, it is not possible,” Anil Yadav, an SP leader said.

SP state president Naresh Uttam seconded the sentiments of party workers as he said that there was the anti-government sentiment on the ground. "We felt that. People have seen how crowds of thousands had waited till 3 in the morning for Akhilesh Yadav. There was a groundswell in favor of Akhilesh Yadav but what happed today is inexplicable", he told this reporter.

He said this loss is hard to explain when many of the top BJP leaders had lost their elections. “BJP is expert in spreading lies and they did it once again,” Uttam said.

A party worker was so dejected with the poll outcome that he attempted self-immolation outside Vidhan Sabha in Lucknow. The police present there rescued him.

It is too early to explain what went wrong with the opposition but political analyst Hemant Tiwari said that BJP’s victory could be explained in two words -ration and prashashan (free ration and administration). What clicked in favour of BJP was that it was able to tell the people that it had stood by them, despite there being complaints of gross misgovernance and an increase in unemployment.

“Arrogance of Akhilesh Yadav too resulted in ignoring some senior leader. Probably, he was so confident of his victory that he did not use other senior leaders in campaigning. With the result, he was lone warrior while in contrast, all the senior leaders of the BJP were regularly touring length and breadth of UP,” Tiwari said.

Political analysts too believe that the way BJP has done well in western UP shows that the farm agitation did not have that much effect though senior BJP leaders including Cane development Minister Suresh Rana lost the election. Another BJP leaders Sangeet Som, architect of Muzaffarnagar riot also lost.

This election has also helped Yogi Adityanath to break the jinx that the Chief Minister who tours Noida does not return to power.

If Yogi becomes the Chief Minister, it will be only the second time after 1985, when Congress chief minister Narain Dutt Tiwari was elected as the CM after getting landslide victory in the wake of the assassination of the then Prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Yogi Adityanath will be the only chief minister of the BJP who will return to power with a full majority. Before this, Kalyan Singh and Rajnath Singh were BJP chief ministers of the state but they could not get consecutive second terms.

If we compare BJP’s 2022 victory with Congress’s victory in 1985 – then Congress had got 269 seats with 39.25 per cent of votes while BJP to a rough estimate would win the almost the same number of seats with over 42 percent vote share.

In 1980 too, Congress had won 309 seats to grab power in UP, while BJP in 2017 elections had got 326 seats.