After the UP setback, what next?

Two swallows do not a summer make… nor three or four. But when the BJP, invincible after its landslide victory in the 2014 General Elections, consolidated further by a convincing victory in the UP Assembly poll in March 2017, starts losing one bypoll after another, it means its woes have begun.

The first signal of the chinks in BJP’s armour came with the Gujarat Assembly polls that the party should have swept.

But the Congress put up a stellar performance and it was only Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emotional, son-of- the-soil rhetoric that saved the BJP. Then came its stunning defeat in bypolls in Rajasthan, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh.

A real shocker

But its most shocking defeat came last fortnight with the BJP losing both Gorakhpur and Phulpur, the first held by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for five terms, and the second by his deputy, Keshav Prasad Maurya.

Thanks to the BSP chief Mayawati, whose party was humiliated in both 2014 and 2017, who pulled off a last-minute stunt to support arch rival SP, the BJP lost both the seats. To understand the magnitude of this loss for he BJP and the sweetness of the victory for the SP, let’s rewind.

The BJP’s victory in the 2017 Assembly polls was colossal. Thanks to Modi’s aggressive campaigning, the Akhilesh Yadav government was summarily thrown out. The BJP won 324 seats, leaving a niggardly 55 for the SP-Congress combine and only 19 for the BSP — a terrific consolidation of its 2014 Lok Sabha victory when it got a whopping 71 of 80 UP seats.

But Yogi Adityanath was made chief minister. He was known for spewing communal rhetoric and asking Muslims to go to Pakistan at the drop of a hat. Manipulated media reports glorifying him as a great leader employing Muslims in his math, making his ministers and bureaucrats accountable, etc, surfaced, and he was touted as a serious contender to Modi in 2019.

But within months the “mini-Modi” fumbled and UP was ridden with controversies. The closure of illegal slaughter houses affected not only the livelihood of Muslims, but also of Dalits.

The formation of anti-Romeo squads, allegedly to curb eve-teasing, led to the harassment of young couples. And then there was the death of children in a Gorakhpur hospital where oxygen supply to them was cut off for non-payment. The Yogi government only played blame games.

But the biggest reason for the BJP’s defeat and the SP’s victory is poll arithmetic. The Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats were won by margins of 21,900 and 59,600 votes respectively.

Opposition springs to life

Nothing succeeds like success: after the victories in UP, and the jailed Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD winning the Aarya Lok Sabha seat apart from the Jahanabad Assembly seat in Bihar in this bypoll, opposition leaders like Mayawati and Akhilesh are emerging out of the shadow of defeat. Akhilesh quickly rushed to ‘Bua’ Mayawati’s house to thank her, and in her victory rally she called the Modi government a “dictatorship” that had surpassed the Emergency and accused it of paralysing the media. She added that the BJP’s top leaders “had lost sleep” and would advance the 2019 General Elections.

On the other hand, at the Congress plenary, its newly anointed chief Rahul Gandhi took several potshots at Prime Minister Modi, from “never accepting mistakes” to thinking of “himself as an incarnation of God”; he talked about the four dissenting Supreme Court judges and said the Congress has always respected institutions.

But his best jibe, fully deserved, was reserved for the media: “You can write everything you want about Congress, but we will protect you when the RSS attacks you. This is our philosophy.”

A strident Sonia Gandhi blasted the Modi government for “arrogance” and accused it of “dramabaazi”. Taking the podium after a hug from her son, she called upon party workers to rally around him to begin a “new chapter” for the Congress and to free the country “from discrimination, vendetta politics and arrogance of power”.

So, what next? Of course, making a huge allowance for the many slips between the cup and the lip, BJP’s big setback in UP may lay the groundwork for a broadband alliance where Congress will have to play a leading role, but after taking a reality check of its diminished position pan-India.

For it and other non-NDA players such as the SP, BSP, RJD and now Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP, it’s a matter of survival. Add to this a confident Mamata Banerjee and BJD’s Navin Patnaik, and who knows when Nitish Kumar will jump ship again, this can be a respectable alliance to take on the BJP. But right now, the BJP is quite comfortable on its perch, notwithstanding the hits it has taken lately. As for the future, que sera sera …

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