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

News Snippets

  • For the first time ever, Mukesh Ambani buys a 29% stake in Gautam Adani's Mahan Energen, a subsidiary of Adani Power to source 500MW of electricity from the company's power plant in MP
  • Stocks continue to rise on Thursday - Sensex gains 639 points to 73635 and Nifty 203 points to 22326
  • Golf - Indian Open: 3 Indians at tied 14th as Joost Luiten takes the lead with a wonderful 7-under 65
  • IPL: RR beat DC by 12 runs as Riyan Parag (84 off just 45 balls) shines
  • SP drops two candidates owing allegiance to Azam Khan from Rampur and Moradabad
  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
oppn parties
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.

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.