“Tipu” was the “Sultan” of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday, his sword slaying Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of winning 80 Lok Sabha seats from the heartland state and going on to record a 400-plus total countrywide.

Tipu, as Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav is known among family and friends, received sterling help from the Rahul Gandhi-led Congress.

The two young politicians — mocked as “shehzadas” (princes) by Modi during the campaign — cut the BJP’s tally in the state from the 62 it won in 2019 to 33 this time, according to late evening results and trends.

The Samajwadis won or led from 37 seats while ally Congress, which had contested 17 seats, looked headed to win 6.

Akhilesh, a former chief minister, had declared at almost every election rally that Uttar Pradesh would “stop Modi from changing the Constitution” — something a 400-plus majority would have made it possible for the BJP to do.

Although Akhilesh is not a wrestler like his father and former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav — an expert in Charkha Dav (a wrestling move) — he has put the BJP on the mat in the country’s politically most important state.

Through the campaign, the Samajwadi chief had pooh-poohed the BJP’s high-decibel “400-plus” bluster. A day before the counting of votes, he had told a news conference: “The people have voted to defeat the BJP. The people are going to win.”

As results and trends poured in on Tuesday, he said: “They (the BJP) tried every trick to cheat the people, but the people had made up their minds to show their anger against the tyranny of the (central) government.”

He added: “Our victory (from the state) is the victory of the people of Uttar Pradesh. We salute them for coming forward to save democracy and the Constitution.”

Akhilesh seemed to have managed wins from most of his family bastions — including Kannauj, Mainpuri, Azamgarh and Firozabad — sending a clear message that the
state’s voters had rejected Modi’s appeal to defeat “dynasty politics”.