oppn parties UP Panchayat Polls Results: Warning Signals For The BJP

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UP Panchayat Polls Results: Warning Signals For The BJP

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-05-07 02:46:15

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

The BJP needs to see the warning signals after the debacle in the UP panchayat polls. It has been upstaged by the Samajvadi Party in the state that matters the most. Amit Shah had put his heart and soul in winning UP in what was described as a unique brand of social engineering to get the votes of both the higher castes and the backward classes. But the successful experiment seems to be going bad if the results of the local polls are any indication. The rural areas of UP are divided and not backing the BJP as solidly as before. The situation is particularly bad in PM Modi's Varanasi and only marginally better in CM Adityanath's Gorakhpur.

 Granted that the local elections are not contested on party symbols and are dominated by local bahubalis and social workers (which perhaps explains why a large number of independents win) and a host of local issues come into play, yet the parties do make it clear who their candidates are and also campaign for them. Hence it must be embarrassing for the BJP to open backchannel talks with independents to gain control of zilla parishads. In these elections, many rebels also join the fray. The BJP is hopeful that the winning rebels will return to the party fold.

Even if one were to discount the fact that the poor show by the BJP in West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu was due to the fact that these states have always been out of bounds for the party, the UP results show that the people have started worrying about the government’s handling of the second wave of Covid. With assembly elections due in UP next year, these results show that the party has a lot of work to do to avoid defeat, let alone come close to the sweep it managed in 2017. The party had done exceedingly well in almost all rural areas back then and that was one of the main reasons why it could manage to get a massive 321 seats (out of 403). But these results show it is losing support in rural areas. 

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