UP, Bihar bypolls: Gorakhpur loss start of BJP's worry? Top 10 developments

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said over-confidence and inability to understand the understanding between SP and BSP were the prime reasons for the BJP's shocking loss

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received a severe setback in the Uttar Pradesh and Bihar Lok Sabha and Assembly by-elections, losing four of the five seats in the bypolls, including the all-important Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats in Uttar Pradesh. Especially worrisome for the BJP was the fact that it was trounced by the BSP-backed Samajwadi Party in the high-stakes Gorakhpur and Phulpur bypolls which could boost the chances of a 'mahagathbandhan' of anti-BJP parties before the 2019 general elections.

After sweeping the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 and the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections last year, the BJP faced a last-minute alliance stitched by the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the bypolls. BSP supremo Mayawati had announced her party's backing for SP candidates in both Gorakhpur and Phulpur in return for the SP's support for her party's candidate in the Rajya Sabha biennial elections.

The BJP lost the Gorakhpur seat to the SP by a margin of 21,961 votes. SP candidate Pravin Kumar Nishad got 456,437 more votes than his nearest rival, BJP's Upendra Dutt Shukla, who secured 434,476 votes. In the Phulpur constituency, SP candidate Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel defeated BJP candidate Kaushalendra Singh by a margin of 59,613 votes. The winner polled 342,796 votes, while the BJP candidate secured 283,183.

Significantly, Gorakhpur was earlier held by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, while Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya had held the Phulpur seat.

Meanwhile, in Bihar, the BJP also lost the Araria Lok Sabha constituency and the Jehanabad Assembly seat while scoring a consolation win in the Bhabua Assembly seat. The results in both the states triggered calls for a Grand Alliance -- a la Bihar -- all across India to take on the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Once the outcome of the Uttar Pradesh 2018 bypolls was known, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that "over-confidence and the inability to understand the understanding between SP and BSP" were the prime reasons for the BJP's defeat.

Here are the top 10 developments in the shock defeat for BJP in UP and Bihar bypolls:

1) SP victory boosts chances of an anti-BJP coalition in UP: With the tacit understanding between the Samajwadi Party and the BSP in the Lok Sabha bye-elections for two seats paying off, chances of a 'mahagathbandhan' of anti-BJP parties before the 2019 general elections got a boost in Uttar Pradesh. These results are the beginning of the formation of a broadest possible alliance of Opposition forces before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, senior political analyst and retired head of the political science department of the Lucknow University Ramesh Dixit said.

Read More → UP Bypolls Results 2018 ←

Win at all costs? PM Modi's reforms meet realpolitik in Uttar Pradesh polls

Maurya, BJP UP President, said his party is moving towards cleaner and transparent politics

Elections 2017 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised to clean up politics. The man running the ruling party's campaign in a crucial state election, who is facing 11 criminal cases, says it will take a while.

"At a time of elections, one has to forget every other aspect and just focus on victory," said Keshav Prasad Maurya, as his three-vehicle convoy carrying police with automatic rifles sped through the countryside.

Polls open on Saturday in Uttar Pradesh, with a population of some 220 million, and on the ground Modi's loftier aims for a new India seem far away.

Maurya, the state's president for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), says the charges against him are false and politically motivated; unless he is convicted, they do not prevent him from holding office.

His bosses are not concerned.

An official at the prime minister's office referred questions about Maurya and his criminal cases to the BJP, where an aide to party president and Modi confidant Amit Shah said there was no problem.

The charges are related to Maurya protesting on behalf of Hindu causes, said the aide, and anyone who does so "is not a criminal in the party's eyes."

"Slowly," Maurya told Reuters, "the BJP will be moving towards a direction where it will only have politicians who are absolutely clean and have no cases of corruption against them." (Read More)