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Alliance Math Runs Into Modi | Uttar Pradesh

Modi's charisma seals the gathbandhan's fate as the BJP wrests the state with some losses

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Alliance Math Runs Into Modi | Uttar Pradesh
V FOR VINDICATION: UP CM Yogi Adityanath and his deputies K.P. Maurya and Dinesh Sharma celebrate in Lucknow | Photo: MANEESH AGNIHOTRI

In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the BJP's Smriti Irani lost Amethi to Congress president Rahul Gandhi by 107,000 votes. A determined Irani dug in her heels, camping in the constituency for months together, interacting with locals and carefully planning a social engineering strategy even as Rahul toured the country and the world. To make inroads into the Dalit-Muslim social alliance in Amethi, Irani selected Suresh Pasi, BJP MLA from Jagdishpur (assembly constituency in Amethi) and a local Dalit leader. The indomitable Pasi was even appointed a minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet. To sway the Muslim vote, Irani chose Dr Mohammed Muslim, a former Congress leader who had twice been MLA from Tiloi (another assembly seat in Amethi). Mohsin Raza, the lone Muslim minister in the Adityanath cabinet, was made in-charge of Amethi district.

"Mohsin Raja, together with Mohammed Muslim and Suresh Pasi, regularly visited the poor Muslim and Dalit households in Amethi, ensuring that all government facilities were made available to them," says Ram Prakash Verma, a senior advocate from Amethi. "Such tireless efforts got Smriti Irani Muslim and Dalit votes in substantial numbers, denting the Congress vote banks." Irani's victory in Amethi, a constituency held by Rahul since 2004, has come despite his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's two-week-long campaign there. Amethi is an example of how the BJP's focused campaign has breached the Congress's bastion and turned the gathbandhan (alliance) arithmetic upside down, handing it a humiliating defeat. On January 12, when Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati announced a pre-poll alliance along with the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), there was much euphoria and optimism in the opposition camp. Calculations based on the 2014 results and pre-poll surveys suggested 58 of UP's 80 seats for the grand alliance, 18 for the BJP and four for the Congress.

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The results, however, left all projections astray. While the alliance enjoyed the tacit support of the Congress in several constituencies, the Congress had the open backing of the alliance in Rae Bareli, represented by Sonia Gandhi, and Amethi. Ultimately, none of this could withstand the Narendra Modi blitzkrieg. In his five-week-long gruelling campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held 29 public rallies in the state, 18 of them in eastern UP where Priyanka Gandhi was holding the Congress fort. In addition, Modi did three road shows, including the colourful procession in Varanasi on April 25 when he filed his nomination.

Such a barnstorming campaign turned the tables on the alliance and the Congress, securing the BJP massive wins. Modi himself showed the way, retaining Varanasi with a record 669,602 votes. In 2014, he won the constituency by a margin of 337,000 votes. Improving his own record, Modi clocked a record margin of 475,754 votes over the SP's Shalini Yadav, who polled 193,848 votes. The Congress's Ajay Rai, who stood third, polled 151,800 votes. In Lucknow, Union home minister Rajnath Singh notched a handsome win, bagging 56.8 per cent votes. He trounced SP candidate and former BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha's wife Poonam Sinha, who polled 25.9 per cent votes.

To the grand alliance's only consolation, it managed to contain the BJP and its ally Apna Dal to 64 seats, down nine since the last time. The alliance won 15 seats and the Congress the lone seat of Rae Bareli. Of the 15, the BSP won 10 seats and the SP five. The BSP, which drew a blank in 2014, benefitted from the transfer of the SP's Yadav vote, particularly in seats with significant minority votes (over 30 per cent), such as Amroha, Ghazipur, Saharanpur and Bijnor. The SP could hold on to only two of the Yadav family bases-Azamgarh (Akhilesh Yadav) and Mainpuri (Mulayam Singh Yadav).

On May 21, Akhilesh and Mayawati had met and discussed various post-poll scenarios in light of the exit polls projecting a BJP victory. Both appeared alarmed but displayed cocky confidence that the BJP would bite the dust, like in the Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls in 2018. That was not meant to be.