One Lok Sabha poll to another, how swing in fortunes painted new shades in Uttar Pradesh politics
The BJP won 10 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh in 2004 and 2009. Its tally in the state soared to 71 in 2014.
In the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the then U.P. BJP in-charge Amit Shah had, in an informal discussion with newspersons, remarked: “There is an undeniable Modi wave. I have been associated with politics for a very long time and I must say that at least in my political career so far, I have never seen such a political wave reversing. It only becomes stronger.”
Amit Shah’s remarks were prophetic. The BJP’s decision to field its then PM-pick Narendra Modi from Varanasi in east U.P. literally infused fresh life into the party. Aided by some adept poll management, it changed the nature of politics in the most populous state.
The results were there for all to see as the BJP won 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats on its own in Uttar Pradesh and its ally Apna Dal (Sonelal), a Kurmi OBC party, won two more, making it an astounding saffron sweep.
Just a decade before that, in 2004, the BJP had won 10 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh with a vote share of 22.2% against the Samajwadi Party’s 35 seats (26.2% vote share) and the BSP’s 19 (24.7%). The Congress was just behind with nine seats (12% vote share) while even the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) had won three Lok Sabha seats with a vote share of 4.5%. In 2009, the BJP’s tally in U.P. remained 10, but the vote share declined to 17.5% against the SP’s 23 seats (vote share 23.3%) and the BSP’s 20 seats (vote share 27.4%).
The big story of the 2009 election was that even the Congress, which had been on the decline since losing power in U.P. in 1989, won 21 Lok Sabha seats (vote share 18.3 % vote share) in Uttar Pradesh, a development that party leaders had attributed to party leader Rahul Gandhi’s growing involvement in the state.
“It was truly a win that had got the Congress interested in its U.P.-revival plan as the Rahul Gandhi-Digvijay Singh combine worked well for the party,” a senior Congress leader said.
It is in this backdrop that the BJP’s sweep of U.P. in 2014 looked surreal. More so as between 2009 and 2012, the BJP also lost the 2012 assembly polls to the Samajwadi Party, winning barely 47 seats, its poorest show in a while.
After its sweep of 2014, the BJP followed it up with a spectacular win in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls despite an SP-Congress pre-poll alliance. In 2019, the BJP surprised many by winning 62 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats on its own, while its OBC ally Apna Dal (S) also won two more seats, making it a formidable win that had come against a seemingly unbeatable caste matrix of the SP-BSP-RLD alliance.
Though the BJP lost a few seats since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, it increased its vote share in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to 50%. In the 2022 UP polls, under chief minister Yogi Adityanath, the BJP became the first party in a long time to win a second consecutive term in office under the same chief minister in the state. The seeds of such saffron domination were sown early in 2013 when the then UP in-charge Amit Shah had taught the BJP cadres in UP to think big.
While scouting venues for Jan Vishwas rallies by Modi, Shah had admonished local leaders for not being able to search for a big enough rally ground.
“It was the first time the BJP in U.P. witnessed rallies where the crowd attendance clocked around a lakh. Until then, the biggest rallies for the party were ones that featured Atal Bihari Vajpayeeji. Till that time, the local party leaders getting a few thousand people for the rallies was good enough. Through big rallies and big crowds, the Modi-Shah combine demonstrated a perceptible shift in thinking,” a party leader recalled.