The decimation of the Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh, led by prominent women leaders such as Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Mayawati, has proven that people are no longer impressed with smart slogans but want their leaders on the ground amidst them.
Vadra had promised to shift base to Lucknow soon after being appointed the Congress General Secretary in charge of the state but never did so. She rather chose to parachute into the state from Delhi only when certain incidents in Hathras, Sonbhadra and Lakhimpur happened. Former chief minister Mayawati, however, after securing 10 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 in an alliance with the Samajwadi Party, severed ties with the party and was hardly seen in the public space or hitting the streets on any issue of public relevance in Uttar Pradesh.
The Congress vote share in UP has dropped to 2.4% in the state, perhaps its lowest in the state for decades and down from 6.5% in 2017. The Congress may be reduced to just two seats under the leadership of Vadra against the seven it won in the 2017 election, with even its state chief Ajay Kumar Lallu losing his Tamkuhi Raj seat and ending up at the third place. It’s sitting MLA from Kanpur Cantt seat, Sohail Ansari, has also lost. The only sitting Congress MLA who was leading is Aradhana Mishra Mona, the daughter of Pramod Tiwari.
All senior UP Congress leaders, including RPN Singh, Lalitesh Tripathi, Jitin Prasada and Imran Masood also quit the party in last one year.
Vadra came up with the ‘Ladki Hun Lad Sakti Hun’ campaign and gave a record number of tickets to women candidates but a majority of them have lost their deposits, showing that winnability was hardly a factor in such choices. Vadra clearly failed to revive the organisational strength of the party in Uttar Pradesh and her promises on free electricity and farm loan waiver did not register with the people.
The BSP, meanwhile, saw its vote share in the state drop massively from 23% in 2017 to 13% now, and Mayawati’s party was leading in just one seat till late evening, down from 19 seats in 2017. What also worked against the BSP in this election was the impression among the people that the BSP was acting as BJP’s B-team and Muslim voters seem to have fully rallied behind the Samajwadi Party realising that the BSP was in no position to beat the BJP. Even some of the core Jatav voters of the BSP may have voted for the BJP given the free rations scheme.
According to political observers, Mayawati has failed to tailor her politics to fresh expectations of the electorate and being vocal amidst the people on issues of public importance. She was also seen as unapproachable and many of her top grass-root leaders such as Ram Achal Rajbhar and Lalji Verma were sacked by her unceremoniously after the BSP suffered reverses in the Panchayat elections in UP last year. Her key lieutenant Satish Chandra Mishra attempted a re-run of the Brahmin-Dalit politics for the BSP, like in 2007, but UP’s politics has moved on from that era.
Read all the Latest Politics News and Breaking News here
Comments
0 comment