Booed and dismissed at a “flop team” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2019, the Rahul Gandhi-Akhilesh Yadav duo has proved today that they are capable of giving the all-powerful ruling dispensation a run for its money.
The 2024 Lok Sabha election outcome is a clear reflection of the success of team Rahul-Akhilesh, who went whole hog to accomplish what was considered impossible until yesterday - demolishing the Modi aura, that was the main strength of his party’s resounding victories in both 2014 and 2019 in the county’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh. The results have clearly demolished Union Home Minister and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s oft-repeated proclamation about winning “all of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats.”
While brand Modi fatigue had become visible on the ground even before the long election process began with the first phase on April 19, it became more and more discernable as the poll moved from phase to phase, culminating in the last (seventh) phase on June 1.
What has hit the mighty BJP hard is the sharp fall in Modi’s winning margin in Varanasi, where he polled a far lesser number of votes than he did in both 2014 and 2019. He could not get more than 6,12,970 votes, as against Congress (INDIA) candidate Ajay Rai’s 4,60,467. Modi’s margin stood at a paltry 1,52,000, as against his margin of 4,25,000 in 2019. This comes in huge contrast to BJP’s echoing claim that Modi would set a record by winning the Varanasi seat by a margin of 10 lakh votes.
On the other hand, Rahul Gandhi won from Rae Bareli with a margin of more than 3 lakh votes, whereby he surpassed the margin with which his mother Sonia Gandhi won the last election there. With that Rahul’s score is the highest margin in the entire state.
The other devastating defeat for the BJP was Amethi, where Modi’s close confidante and Union Minister Smriti Irani was defeated in a straight contest by a small-time Congress worker Kishori Lal Sharma.
Other than his own aura, initially Modi seemed to also depend heavily on the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, for which he and his supporters were busy attributing all credit to him alone. No BJP leader ever cared to give any credit to the Supreme Court, whose verdict alone paved the way for the construction of the grand temple that was inaugurated with huge fanfare by none other than Modi who chose to play the ‘pontiff cum king’ on January 22, 2024. Multiple cameras detailed for the coverage of the colourful consecration ceremony ensured that the focus remained only and solely on the prime minister, virtually ignoring the presence of both RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat as well as the saffron-clad UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Sure enough, his expectations were very high and evidently, team Modi was pretty confident of the political dividends that the temple and the inauguration ceremony would yield at this election, at least in the vicinity of Ayodhya, the sprawling Eastern corner of UP widely known as Purvanchal. But by the time it came to voting in this region, the temple had clearly lost its sheen and the poll results clearly left Modi high and dry. Despite all the high profile campaign and an opulent road-show (read Ayodhya) by none other than Prime Minister Modi himself was lost to the BJP.
BJP nominee Laloo Singh, the sitting MP from Faizabad was defeated by Samajwadi Party leader Awadhesh Kumar why a margin of more than 50,000 votes, sending shock waves to the entire BJP leadership. Even the sharp fall in Defence Minister Raj Nath Singh’s victory margin (with a mere 60000 votes) is seen as a jolt not only for him but also for the mighty party.
The UP poll outcome which shows INDIA leading in UP with 41 seats as against 37 of the BJP at 6.30 pm, is a complete fall from grace for the ruling party, whose top campaigner Amit Shah was out to dismiss the opposition as “loser” from day one.
It may be pointed out that what became the key game-changer was Rahul Gandhi’s sustained campaign that the BJP was out to change the Constitution because it wanted to do away with reservations for the downtrodden. What began with BJP leaders’ call to take BJP “400-paar” turned into the party’s waterloo in UP. It was Rahul Gandhi who took the cue from this BJP campaign and went about telling the people how BJP’s real intent was to finish the system of reservations. The message went deep down among thin e scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and OBCs bringing a sudden shift of votes of a large electorate.
A concerted counter-campaign launched by Modi-Shah and others failed to dispel this impression that had already gone deep in the minds of people. With BSP leader Mayawati having already exposed herself as “Team B” of BJP, a large chunk of Dalits chose to switch loyalties to the INDIA alliance in many parts of UP. BJP continued to believe that Dalits would not go to INDIA simply because of the Samajwadi Party being the main constituent and with which they have never related themselves. But the drift happened simply because SP was now in alliance with Congress, with which Dalits have had an old bond, which had broken with the arrival of Kanshi Ram who weaned away Dalits into BSP in the nineties.
It was the Rahul–Akhilesh duo who also made waves among youth as they took real issues like unemployment and price rise to touch the hearts of common people.
At the end of the day, BJP’s poor show in UP also goes to show how the common masses are fundamentally against dictatorial ways and do not hesitate to silently express their disapproval of despots, who go about bulldozing their way with impunity. And that reflects how Yogi Adityanath’s arbitrary ways added up to the people’s anger against the whole system.
The results also speak volumes about how Modi’s overt bid to communalise the election by propping up Hindu-Musalman narratives also fell flat before the basic economic needs of the common people, who refused to fall into BJP’s trap of religious polarization.