The tremors generated by the BJP’s comprehensive defeat in UP and in Bihar, a total of three parliamentary seats, refuse to die down.
With these three defeats, BJP has slipped from 282 in 2014 to 272.
As the SP leader Akhilesh Yadav, went to meet BSP leader Mayawati last night in Lucknow for forty minutes, to keep the doors open for a future understanding, it has spelled spring for the non-BJP Opposition in Lucknow, and beyond.
The loss of Gorakhpur, the bastion of the BJP even when it was defeated everywhere else, the return of the SP in Phulpur and the fact that in Araria, even when the late Taslimuddin won, he got 75,000 votes less than the total secured by the BJP and JD(U), they fought separately, but this time they were united and yet the RJD trumped them, has signalled to the Opposition that the BJP’s formidable machine and personal appeal of the PM or Hindu imagination sharpened by the nomination of Adiyanath as CM may have just run its course.
Sources told News Central; “work needs to be done, like ensuring that in each seat ahead, the BJP meets its match and is felled. What these elections certify is that it can be done.”
The BSP Supremo, Mayawati, who scored zero seats in the 2014 election despite securing over 20% of the vote share, has so far been the toughest nut to crack. With her going along and being able to transfer her votes to ensure the defeat of the BJP is seen as “very significant, and beyond electoral maths.” Sources say it has dealt a “deathblow” to the idea of the BJP’s “new social mathematics and deliberately excluding certain sections.”
Mathematics is generating its own Chemistry, and an election contested enthusiastically by a more or less united Opposition in 543 seats is emerging as the best way ahead to mount a challenge to the BJP.
That the Opposition pan India is sitting up was obvious when MK Stalin of the DMK, which again like the BSP was stunned by scoring zero in 2014 tweeted; “Congratulations @yadavakhilesh @laluprasadrjd and Smt. Mayawati for a spectacular win in the bypolls. This victory is an important landmark in asserting opposition unity. People have shown us again that democracy, constitution and it’s secular fabric are supreme. #ByPollResults”.
TMC president Mamata Banerjee did not lose a minute to congratulate Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, and Lalu Prasad, terming it the “beginning of the end”.
The CPM general secretary, Sitaram Yechury said enigmatically; “the results are for all to see.”
The Congress, despite being trumped in both places and not having been part of the alliance has been jubilant, with Congress president Rahul Gandhi declaring that it was clear that the “terrible anger” against the BJP would result in the “non-BJP candidate” securing the most votes. Jitin Prasada termed the by poll results, a “precursor of 2019.”
It is significant that for the BJP to even be within sniffing distance of Delhi in 2019, it would need to repeat its performance in the Hindi heartland, where in 2014, it got all seats in Gujarat, Rajasthan and nearly all in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh and in Uttar Pradesh. Anything it seeks to make up on the east coast or the north-east, cannot rival losses in its earlier rich haul of the heartland.
So, this year, fresh from surviving the scare in Gujarat assembly polls in December, the defeats in all the five parliamentary elections held in the heartland – two in Rajasthan, two in UP and one in Bihar – of which BJP held four, have set alarm bells ringing in the ruling party.