BJP blighted in bypolls

Lucknow/Patna: In a stunning blow to the BJP ahead of the 2019 general elections, the party on Wednesday lost bypolls to all three Lok Sabha seats it contested, including its bastion Gorakhpur, and Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh, besides Araria in Bihar. 

The shocker for the BJP came as an anticlimax after its surprise win in three northeastern states, including Tripura, where it scripted history, demolishing the Left citadel of 25 years and forming its first government in the state. Together with its regional allies, the BJP also formed its governments in Nagaland and Meghalaya. 

A consolidation of OBC, Dalit and Muslim votes powered Samajwadi Party candidates to victory in Gorakhpur, a seat represented by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for five successive terms, and Phulpur, which elected his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Both of them had won their seats by margins of over 3 lakh votes.

Buffeted by the surprise defeat, Adityanath attributed it to "overconfidence" of the party and called for an in-depth analysis of the causes. "We failed to understand the implications of this alliance between Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party that are as different as chalk and cheese in the middle of the elections as part of bargain for the Rajya Sabha elections," he said. 

The SP is backing BSP candidate for the coming Rajya Sabha polls in the state. Samajwadi Party's Pravin Nishad defeated BJP's Upendra Dutt Shukla by 21,961 votes in Gorakhpur, the seat which was with the party since 1989, while Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel of SP clinched the Phulpur seat drubbing the saffron party's Kaushalendra Singh Patel by 59,460 votes. 

Lalu Prasad's RJD retained the Araria Lok Sabha seat where its nominee Sarfaraz Alam beat BJP's Pradeep Kumar Singh by over 60,000 votes, in a setback for the JD(U)-BJP alliance, which went to the hustings for the first time after Nitish Kumar returned to the NDA fold. 

In small consolation for the BJP, its candidate Rinki Rani Pandey retained the Bhabhua Assembly seat for the party, defeating her Congress rival Shambhu Singh Patel by about 14,000 votes. The RJD retained the Jehanabad Assembly seat, with its nominee Suday Yadav defeating his JD(U) rival Abhiram Sharma by more than 30,000 votes.

The SP's victory reminded many of the triumph of the now defunct JD(U)-RJD-Congress Grand Alliance in Bihar which had trounced the BJP-led NDA in 2015. The victory was attributed to the consolidation of OBC and Muslim voters in favour of the Grand alliance after the two major parties--JD(U) and RJD came together. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav termed the victory as one of "social justice" and profusely thanked the Mayawati and her BSP for it. 

In Uttar Pradesh, the SP and BSP came together after 1993 when they had formed a coalition government. In Gorakhpur, a consolidation of OBC-Dalit-Muslim votes, which used to get split between the SP and BSP, besides the support of smaller entities like the Nishad Party and Peace Party, worked wonders for the Samajwadi Party candidates.