New Delhi: After two successful Lok Sabha campaigns in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party has set itself a monumental target of winning all 80 seats in the state in the 2024 general election. In his election rallies, chief minister Yogi Adityanath, while seeking votes for the BJP, is asking voters to gift Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “garland” of “80 beads” this time on his way to cross the 400-seat mark in the country.
While nothing is impossible in electoral politics, especially for a party with a maximalist and expansionist tendency such as the BJP, the results in the 2014 and 2019 elections – the party’s best performances ever in the state – indicate that the clarion call of ‘80 mein 80′ may be a far-fetched one. There are several seats where the BJP faces a daunting social arithmetic, while on others it is hanging on by a thread.
In 2014, the BJP hit its highest-ever tally in UP, winning 71 out of 80 seats on its own. Combined with the two seats won by its ally, Apna Dal, the National Democratic Alliance won 73 out of 80 seats, playing a major role in bringing Modi to power at the Centre. Then, in 2019, even when the BJP faced the combined force of the Opposition Mahagathbandhan, the NDA tally only marginally dropped to 64. The Rashtriya Lok Sal scored a zero. The Samajwadi Party won five seats. The Bahujan Samaj Party secured 10 while the Congress got reduced to one.
To beat their previous best of 73, the BJP would have to not only breach traditional bastions of the Opposition parties and sharpen Hindu polarisation, but maybe also need to win over a section of Muslims, as their vote is crucial on several constituencies, especially in the western region.
While it is true that in 2019, the Opposition brought its strongest-possible alliance to the battlefield, five years have passed since. A state election that was held in 2022 indicated that the BJP’s advantage in mass support over its nearest rival had diminished. In the 2022 state assembly election, though the BJP and its allies came to power again, their combined tally reduced from 325 in 2017 to 273. A drop of 52 seats. Given that a Lok Sabha constituency in the state comprises five assembly constituencies, this roughly translates to 10 Lok Sabha seats.
The main Opposition, the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party, lost the 2022 election despite a high-pitched campaign and a rainbow alliance of backward caste parties and leaders. The SP bettered its position from 2017, when it lost power, and increased its tally from 47 to 111. The SP alliance – now dismantled with the exit of the RLD and the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party – won 125 seats in the 403-assembly.
The trends in state elections may not be sufficient to explain or predict the upcoming general election. However, a look at the results in the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies in the last two general elections and last assembly election, show that the BJP does indeed have weaker areas where it might find it difficult to either win or win with a big margin. In addition to the 16 seats the BJP lost in 2019, the party won 14 by margins under 50,000 votes. Another three were won by margins under one lakh. That gives the Opposition a playing field of 30-33 seats where it can potentially challenge the saffron party. It is possible that the Opposition might be able to reverse some of these seats, at least on paper, or put up a serious fight.
In 2014, the BJP won 17 seats with margins under a lakh, with six of them with margins of 50,000 or less.
An analysis of the last two elections – based on BJP losses, close wins, reversible margins or social arithmetic – helps us identify around 30 seats where the Opposition could turn the tides. In the overall scheme, even if the Opposition manages to win 25-30 seats in UP, bringing down the BJP’s tally to below 60, it would be considered a success. Most importantly, it would bust the saffron party’s tall claims of “80 mein 80”.
The first seat is Saharanpur. The BJP won it in 2014 by 65,000 votes due to a divided Opposition but lost in 2019 despite the Congress candidate cutting into more than two lakh Opposition votes. The Congress has fielded Imran Masood again, this time as the joint candidate of INDIA bloc. Saharanpur has a winning formula of Dalits, especially Jatavs, and Muslims, who are expected to consolidate behind Masood. The BJP might also have to struggle to win in other seats with substantial Muslim population in West UP – Rampur and Moradabad – despite the SP’s local units looking like a divided house with several claimants to the ticket turning up to file their nomination recently.
Sambhal and Amroha, too, with above-average Muslim population – one-fifth of UP’s population are Muslims – are seats that the BJP has traditionally struggled to win. The BJP’s only win in Sambhal came in 2014. The Opposition also has a realistic chance in Nagina and Bijnor.
In the sugarcane belt, too, the BJP won some seats in 2019 by narrow margins: Muzaffarnagar (around 6,000), Baghpat (23,000) and Meerut (4,700). It won Kairana, which abuts Muzaffarnagar, by 92,000. It needs to be pointed out that in 2019, the SP had the support of the BSP and more importantly the RLD, in this region. Even with the RLD pulling out of the INDIA bloc and joining NDA, and the BSP contesting alone, the social arithmetic on these seats, especially the possibility of polarising the Muslim votes in favour of the Opposition, make them potential hot contests.
The SP had initially displayed courage and fielded a Dalit lawyer Bhanu Pratap Singh in Meerut, a general seat. But after facing protests over his outsider tag and demands to replace him with Akhilesh-aide and young Gurjar MLA Atul Pradhan, the party made the switch. Pradhan will have a fresh face to challenge – none other than Arun Govil, the actor who is known for playing Lord Ram in the popular television series Ramayana.
The BJP dropped the sitting MP and veteran leader Rajendra Agarwal, who had barely scraped past the finishing line in 2019. Though the BJP won Pilibhit by a huge margin in 2019, the situation could turn complicated this time after it dropped sitting MP Varun Gandhi, who has decided to abstain from the election altogether.
In the last election, the BJP also stunned the SP by breaching its traditional bastions, Firozabad, Kannauj and Budaun by around 29,000, 13,000 and 18,000 votes, respectively.
In Firozabad, the SP’s Akshay Yadav lost after his disgruntled uncle Shivpal Yadav cut into his votes. In Kannauj, Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav suffered an upset. In Budaun, Dharmendra Yadav too lost in a shock result. Shivpal Yadav is back in the SP-fold and this time, is contesting from Budaun. Dimple is fielded from Mainpuri, a Yadav-clan bastion, after the death of her father-in-law and SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Away from the Yadav-clan strongholds, in Rae Bareli and Amethi too, the BJP needs to defy traditional equations to win. The BJP failed to win Rae Bareli in both 2014 and 2019. Although in 2019, Smriti Irani defeated Rahul Gandhi in Amethi, she won by a margin of 55,000, which is potentially reversible.
The biggest challenge to the BJP’s dream of 80 seats comes from Purvanchal. In 2019, the saffron party lost the Ambedkar Nagar, Sravasti, Lalganj, Azamgarh, Ghosi, Jaunpur and Ghazipur seats there. In addition to these, the party also won several seats by a thin margin. It won Machhlishahr by a paper-thin margin of 181 votes, Chandauli by 14,000 votes, Ballia by 15,000 votes, Sultanpur by 14,000 votes, Basti by 30,000 votes, Sant Kabir Nagar by 35,000 and Kaushambhi by 38,000 votes.
The prestigious seat of Faizabad, where Ayodhya and the Ram Temple are located, was won by the BJP by 65,000 votes. This time, the SP has fielded a senior Dalit leader, a sitting MLA Awadesh Pradesh, in this constituency even though it is a general seat, in a bid to tap into the support of the Pasi community that is found here in large numbers. The BJP’s lead in Bhadohi (43,000) and Robertsganj (53,000) are also far from irreversible.
The 2022 assembly election provided a wake-up call to the BJP as it failed to open its account or performed below expectation in several districts with high populations of OBCs and Dalits. The party lost all 25 assembly seats in Azamgarh, Ambedkar Nagar, Ghazipur and Kaushambi districts. In Ballia, Mau, Jaunpur, Basti and Pratapgarh, also in eastern UP, the BJP could only win nine out of 32 seats. In the west, too, the BJP found the going difficult in several districts where it had performed remarkably well in previous elections. In Meerut, the party won only three out of seven seats; in Shamli it failed to open its score, losing all three; in the communally-sensitive district Muzaffarnagar, which was rocked by deadly riots in 2013, the party could only manage two out of six seats. Out of the 23 seats in Bijnor, Rampur, Sambhal and Moradabad, the BJP won only eight.
However, the Opposition does not command the same alliance that it did two years ago. The exit of the SBSP in East UP and the RLD in West UP have hurt the cause of the INDIA bloc. It already faced the daunting task of taking on a BJP riding on the face of Modi as well as its allies, Nishad Party and the Apna Dal (Soneylal). Akhilesh Yadav’s social arithmetic of uniting OBCs under his leadership also disintegrated with the exit of the SBSP and the RLD. Now, with his lone alliance partner Apna Dal (Kameravadi) also forming an alliance with the AIMIM of Asaduddin Owaisi, it is the SP and Congress versus the rest.
With Mayawati deciding to field Muslim candidates on several seats and hoping to play spoiler to benefit the incumbent BJP, the Opposition’s task of uniting non-BJP votes faces an additional hurdle. Moreover, the recent defections of more than half-a-dozen SP MLAs, most of them “upper caste”, have altered local equations in Amethi, Rae Bareli, Faizabad, Ambedkar Nagar and Kaushambi Lok Sabha seats. How serious a challenge the Opposition can pose to the BJP may be clear once all candidates are declared. But the slogan of “80 mein 80” seems nothing more than psychological warfare to deflate the Opposition even before the battle begins.
Implicit in this judgment is the view that despite the suggestions of a quid pro quo, the voter is not going to go all moralistic on the BJP and its allies. The bottom line in this corporate assessment – or hope – is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has used his popularity and trustworthiness to firewall the regime from the fallout that details of a nexus between corrupt business and crooked politicians is likely to generate.