The BJP is trailing the Samajwadi Party in panchayat polls in Uttar Pradesh, including in Ayodhya and Varanasi that are politically and ideologically of prime significance to the ruling party.
In Mathura, another district whose religious significance the BJP is tapping into with increasing vigour, the party lost to Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
In what is being seen as a major setback for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, where the Yogi Adityanath government has faced severe criticism for alleged misgovernance, its crackdown on dissent, repression of the marginalised and its handling of the pandemic, the party’s tally was 10 less than principal challenger Samajwadi Party in seats whose results were announced on Tuesday.
Close to 13,500 people have died in the pandemic, with ceaselessly burning pyres suggesting the real death toll is much higher. There has been an acute crisis of lifesaving oxygen but the Adityanath government has been in denial and has been threatening hospitals and those highlighting pictures of pyres, inviting charges of cruelty and highhandedness.
While the BJP had won 750 block-level zilla panchayat wards, the Samajwadis had pocketed 760. A total of 3,051 wards had gone to the polls in the crucial heartland state where Assembly elections are due next year. The results of the remaining seats are to be declared on Wednesday.
Former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party appeared to have been inspired by Mamata Banerjee’s resounding drubbing of the BJP in Bengal and asserted that it would upstage the ruling party in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
It is largely believed that with the state machinery at its disposal, the ruling party has an edge over its rivals in rural body elections, which made the BJP’s performance look even more lacklustre.
What would have come as a shock for Adityanath and the BJP was the party’s crushing defeat at the hands of the Samajwadi Party in Ayodhya, core to the saffron ecosystem’s ideological agenda and the launch pad of its meteoric rise in national politics.
Against the backdrop of the beginning of the construction of the Ram temple, a promise that had been intrinsic to its rise to power nationally and at the state level, the BJP managed to win only six of the 40 zilla panchayat wards in Ayodhya, with the Samajwadi Party bagging 24.
The Bahujan Samaj Party won five seats while the remaining were pouched by smaller parties and Independents.
In the previous elections, the BJP had won 22 and the Samajwadis eight.
In Varanasi (Kashi), Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency, the BJP won seven of the 40 wards and the Samajwadi Party emerged victorious in 15, an exact reversal of fortunes when compared with the results of the previous elections. The BSP won five seats.
In Mathura, the BJP won nine of the 33 wards, with the BSP getting 11. The Samajwadis won one seat.
The BJP, the RSS and their co-travellers have been claiming that mosques in the vicinity of the Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi and the Krishna Janmasthan (birthplace) shrine in Mathura had come up after parts of the Hindu places of worship had been demolished.
Multiple court cases have been filed seeking the takeover of the mosques’ land, although the shrines have coexisted peacefully for centuries.
Of the total zilla panchayat seats whose results have been announced, the BSP has won 381 and the Congress 76. The rest have been bagged by the Rashtriya Lok Dal and other smaller parties and Independent candidates. The majority of the Independents had been previously with the BJP, but left when the party refused to support them for the elections.
The BJP is ahead in Bundelkhand and Rohilkhand. It has done comparatively better in western Uttar Pradesh too, where the RLD has performed well because of its support base of Jat farmers and the peasants’ movement against the BJP.
The Samajwadis have been more successful in the state’s east and the central region.
BJP spokesperson Manish Shukla said: “The panchayat elections were held in an extraordinary situation. There was fear of Covid everywhere. We must thank the voters. The issues in the Assembly polls are different. The BJP is doing a great job in the state and will win the 2022 elections.”
Rajendra Chaudhary, a Samajwadi spokesperson, said: “Mamata Banerjee defeated the BJP in the Bengal Assembly polls. The panchayat election results here are a bold indication that we will oust the BJP in Uttar Pradesh in 2022.
