QUITE LIKE it did in Maharashtra, in Uttar Pradesh too, the BJP turned around its Lok Sabha poll setback into a resounding win in Saturday’s results. Of the nine Assembly seats that went to bypolls in UP, the BJP and allies won seven, including one Muslim-dominated constituency that had eluded the party for 30-plus years.

Like in Maharashtra, the UP bypoll success followed assiduous planning by the BJP on the ground almost from the time of the Lok Sabha results, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath taking the lead from selection of the candidates to campaigning, and putting his entire Council of Ministers to work. The “Batenge to katenge” slogan, first raised by Adityanath in UP and then repeated in the Maharashtra and Assembly elections, helped the party consolidate the Hindu votes.

Consequently, of the seven seats won by the BJP and allies (six of them by the BJP), two were wrested from the Samajwadi Party (SP).

Like in Maharashtra, the Opposition – that is, the SP – had few new ideas, and stuck to its plank of “PDA (Pichchde, Dalit, Alpasankhayak)” while hoping to retain the non-Yadav OBC support that came its way in the general elections. The SP, which ended with a stunning 33 seats in the Lok Sabha polls in UP, ahead of the BJP, concentrated almost its entire bypoll energy on retaining the Karhal seat, which had been vacated by its chief, Akhilesh Yadav.

In the process, the party that made the most gains was the fledgling Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshiram) of Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad. In Meerapur and Kundarki, its Muslim candidates finished third, ahead of the BSP and AIMIM. In Khair and Ghaziabad too, the ASP candidates got a credible 8,269 and 6,000-plus votes respectively.

The results indicate that the ASP got both Dalit and Muslim votes, not a comforting thought for the UP Opposition, including the SP, Congress and BSP. A Congress leader said: “Chandrashekhar is emerging as a popular leader, especially among Dalit youths, and has been able to get some minority votes as well with his Muslim candidates. The same strategy that was adopted by the BSP in the past seems to be working for Chandrashekhar. In the 2027 Assembly polls in UP, he will certainly be a significant player.”

Meanwhile, the BJP played the balancing game better, selecting candidates keeping the local caste equations in mind. For example in Katehri, which has a dominant population of Nishads as well as Brahmins, the BJP went with a Nishad, calculating that this would get the party the community’s vote, apart from its traditional upper caste votes.

A BJP leader said: “Lots of things worked in our favour, and the overconfidence of the Opposition was also one of them. The work on the ground started much before the polls were announced. The Chief Minister did not just tour the nine seats but also held at least two major public welfare events in each, not to mention the party’s deployment of ministers, MLAs and MPs on the ground for campaigning as per the local caste equations.”

Ironically, the Congress may not be too displeased with the results. The SP’s refusal to share more than a couple of seats with it had led the Congress to decide to stay out of the bypolls. Used to being seen as the dead weight in their coalition, Congress leaders have been saying after the results that it is time the SP had a reality check over its PDA formula and realised that it cannot take the Dalit vote for granted.

Congress leaders feel the party is also in a better position now to bargain with the SP, and that one of its main arguments would be that the reason the Dalits voted for INDIA in the Lok Sabha polls was the Congress.

Both BJP and Congress leaders point to Kundarki, the minority-dominated seat won by the BJP after 1993, with its Hindu leader defeating 12 Muslim rivals, including the SP’s sitting MLA. Similarly, the BJP won OBC-dominated Katehri for the first time in three decades after the SP’s Kurmi candidate Shobhawati Verma failed to consolidate even all the OBC Verma votes behind her. The BSP Kurmi candidate, former Congress district president Amit Verma, got 40,000-plus votes, while the BJP’s Dharmaraj Nishad, also an OBC, won.

The only Scheduled Castes-reserved seat out of the nine, Khair, also went to the BJP. Its candidate Surendra Diler defeated Charu Kain of the SP by over 38,000 votes.

BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi said the results had lifted the clouds over the party since the Lok Sabha results in June. “We had not been able to act in time then to counter the rumours spread by the Opposition regarding reservations and the Constitution, and saw this election as an opportunity. The BJP organisation worked hard to reach the masses, while there was better coordination between the government and the organisation. The Chief Minister and his entire Cabinet put in all their efforts,” Tripathi said.