Samajwadi Party-BSP knocks out BJP in Yogi’s Gorakhpur, Phulpur

Lucknow/Patna: In a stunning blow to the BJP in the countdown to 2019, the party was defeated Wednesday in bypolls to three Lok Sabha seats, including its citadel Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh. The SP, backed by the BSP which was once a bitter rival, wrested the UP seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur while the RJD retained the Araria seat in Bihar. In two assembly bypolls in Bihar, the RJD retained Jehanabad while the BJP held on to Bhabhua.
But the defeats in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, seats vacated last year by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Keshav Prasad Maurya, hurt the BJP most.
In first remarks, Yogi Adityanath blamed it on “over-confidence”, the failure to understand the “unlikely alliance” of the SP and BSP and said “it should be a lesson” for the party.
“Ek bemel gathbandhan in logon dwara kiya gaya… usko samajhne mein kahin na kahin kami rahi. Aur atiatmavishwas iska karan hai… Atiatmavishwas mein rehne ke bajaye hum sab logon ke liye yeh dono chunav sabak hai,” he said.
Maurya too acknowledged the sense of loss: “Phulpur pehli baar jeete thay. Gorakhpur lagatar jeet rahe hain. Jahan chook hui usey dekhenge (We had won Phulpur for the first time (in 2014). We had been winning Gorakhpur repeatedly. We will examine where we slipped).”
SP president Akhilesh Yadav was jubilant and thanked BSP chief Mayawati for backing his party’s candidates. He said the elections were a “mandate on both the governments at the Centre and the state… people have come together to bring BJP’s bure din (bad days)… I want to thank BSP leader Mayawati for her and her party’s support in this important fight”.
“Results declared Wednesday are historic and revolutionary. This is a reply from those who unite to those who do negative politics of division. This is the beginning of a grand win in 2019,” he tweeted.
While the BJP has won a string of assembly elections, it has been losing Lok Sabha bypolls in the Hindi heartland and adjoining states in the last one year. In 2017, it lost bypolls in Amritsar in March, Srinagar a month later and Gurdaspur in October. Earlier this year, it lost Alwar and Ajmer in Rajasthan. In West Bengal, it lost the Uluberia seat the same day.
With the defeats Wednesday, the BJP has lost 10 Lok Sabha bypolls in the last one year if one were to include Malappuram in Kerala in April last year — Kerala is not a strength area of the BJP.
The Gorakhpur seat, which the BJP had been winning since 1991 and was represented by Adityanath for five consecutive terms, saw SP’s Praveen Kumar Nishad defeating BJP’s Upendra Shukla.
While the BSP had announced support to SP a few days before polling, BSP cadre successfully transferred the Dalit votes to SP candidates in both Gorakhpur and Phulpur. On Wednesday, SP and BSP workers were seen celebrating the victories together.
Akhilesh Yadav’s move to field Nishad party leader Praveen Kumar Nishad prevented division of Nishad votes. There are more than three lakh Nishad votes in Gorakhpur.
In OBC Patel-dominated Phulpur, SP’s Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel defeated BJP’s Kaushlendra Singh Patel. Independent candidate Atiq Ahmed, who fought as an Independent from Deoria jail, got a significant number of votes but failed to make a major difference to the SP-BSP votebank.