Election results 2024: BJP’s ‘double engine’ develops a snag in Uttar Pradesh
The Hindu
BJP faces internal tussles and criticism over poor performance in Uttar Pradesh elections, with key leaders losing seats.
As the process of reviewing the dismal performance of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh gets going, the internal tussle in the party has come to the fore. Not only have six Union Ministers lost their seats in the State, but 16 Ministers in the State government have failed to hold on to their Assembly segments in a humdinger of a contest in which the party came down to 33 seats from 62 seats in 2019.
From the complacency and confusion caused by the slogan of “400 paar (more than 400)“, and the inability to arrest anti-incumbency against sitting MPs to bringing in outsiders in the last minute and not getting the caste calculus right, a series of grouses have surfaced that give some semblance to the conspiracy theories floated during the campaign, which suggested that the two ‘engines’ were on a collision course.
Election results 2024: Follow highlights on June 06, 2024
Suddenly, meaning is being drawn into the party’s poor performance in the Varanasi division (Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s seat) and the better strike rate in Gorakhpur (Chief Minister Yogi Adityanth’s constituency). Sources are coming up with tales of complacency and indifference to describe why Mr. Modi’s margin of victory fell significantly. “With at least a dozen Ministers landing in the constituency, the local worker kept serving them instead of going to the ground,” a source said.
Sanjay Nishad, chairman of the Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hamara Aam Dal (NISHAD) party, an ally of the BJP that was entrusted with delivering the votes of boatmen communities, told reporters the NDA’s prospects in the State suffered as the slogan of “400 paar” caused complacency, and irresponsible statements were made by some candidates, including Lallu Singh and Arun Govil, on changing the Indian Constitution. Mr. Nishad’s son, Praveen Nishad, lost the Sant Kabir Nagar seat to the Samajwadi Party’s (SP) candidate from the Nishad community, even though the Muslim candidate of Bahujan Samaj Party (BJP) secured more than 150,000 votes.
Jaiveer Singh, Minister in the Yogi Adityanath government, who could not win in his Assembly segment, said that the Opposition had succeeded in misinterpreting the slogan of “400 paar”, creating confusion in the minds of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Dalits that, if voted to power, the party would take away their quotas.
Meanwhile, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, who lost the Fatehpur seat, told a news agency that although she would continue to work for Fatehpur, she would identify those who had created obstacles in Mr. Modi’s development work.
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Ramoji Rao left an indelible mark on various fields, says A.P. Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. Recalling that the name of Amaravati for the new capital city was suggested by Ramoji Rao, the Chief Minister says the government will set up a Vignan Kendra and a road after him in the capital city, and ‘Ramoji Chitra Nagari’ in Visakhapatnam.