UP proved that, as of now, Yogi Adityanath is no Modi. The Prime Minister might not be too unhappy about that at least.
At least we cannot blame it on a “porn stache”.
When the political novice Democrat candidate Conor Lamb won the Republican bastion of southwestern Pennsylvania, US, this week, a strategist blamed Republican nominee Rick Saccone’s moustache.
“It’s a porn stache,” he said, alluding to the kind of moustache favoured by American porn stars.
Alas, the BJP has no ‘porn stache’ to blame in Gorakhpur and Phulpur.
Luckily, social media is full of pundits who can offer instant advice to the BJP on how it can shake off the UP bypoll defeats.
Step 1: Go ‘anti’-national
Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath was the one who bragged the bypolls were a dress rehearsal for the national elections next year. Now we are suddenly being told that byelections are decided on local issues. This was just a bypoll, without massive road shows and massive Narendra Modi rallies and Amit Shah’s booth micromanagement. Yet Adityanath did address a record 16 public meetings. A bypoll is thus an all-important prestige election until it is not.
Step 2: Blame the candidates
While Gorakhpur BJP candidate Upendra Dutt Shukla’s moustache did not raise any hackles, folks are pointing out that he was MIA during much of the campaign because of ill health, and that he was not even Adityanath’s choice. It was the party’s central leadership that chose him.
Step 3: Claim the higher ground
Adityanath has said the BJP failed to understand the impact of the “rajnitik saudebaazi (political deal-making)” between the BSP and the SP. The ever-optimistic Sambit Patra has said the opportunistic alliance will never last. After all, the CBI can always be uncaged to stress-test the alliance. The BJP’s supporters have also lamented the return of caste politics, as if the party never does any of its own dog-whistling. Adityanath had warned voters against the SP saying they did not want the rule of Aurangzeb in UP.
Also, it would have been easier to swallow the BJP’s higher-moral-ground attitude if the party had not just welcomed infamous party-hopper Naresh Agrawal into the BJP with open arms, an act that left even some of its diehard supporters aghast. “I believe that Lord Ram got angry with you (BJP) the day you rolled out the red carpet for the SP leader, who has criticised Lord Ram,” said the Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut.
Step 4: They still love you (But they are fickle)
Adityanath blamed the low voter turnout, saying overconfidence might also have been responsible. Others insisted on Twitter people were pissed off that Adityanath had cracked down on cheating in examinations. Others still pointed out that the BJP only suffered a negative swing of five per cent. The SP made most of its gains from the BSP and the Congress.
Step 5: Find someone else to pick on
Luckily, the Congress is always around. The Congress candidates lost their deposits in both Gorakhpur and Phulpur. Rahul Gandhi tweeted, “The Congress is committed to rejuvenate itself in Uttar Pradesh but it can’t be done overnight.” And there’s the other fail-safe whipping boy too — in Bihar, the BJP’s Sushil Kumar Modi said the RJD got its lead “from 2 minority dominated constituency (sic) which led to their victory”.
Luckily, the solutions are also handy.
Tavleen Singh has said the Prime Minister needs to learn that “nobody wants love jihad and cow vigilantes”, and deliver real “parivartan” and “vikas”. Madhu Kishwar has said the loss is “no big deal”, but this is a “wakeup call” and the Prime Minister “better not take voters for granted”. Chetan Bhagat thinks the BJP needs to understand the ABC of arithmetic because it’s all about math not the Gorakhpur Math. “It is arithmetic. Not ideology. A+B+C is always greater than A or B or C.” (Although the Left and the Congress came together to defeat the Trinamool in Bengal and seemed to actually do even worse as a result). And anyway, it’s all the cycle of life, said the philosophical Bhagat — “Election Victory = power = eventual defeat. The circle of life, in politics.” Sadanand Dhume said the results showed that it was “perhaps not that wise of BJP to nominate a CM of UP who appeals to the most extreme elements of its base”.
Basically, all this shows is that, as pundits, we like to read our pet peeves into election results even though we do not really know whether gau rakshak vigilantism was a decisive issue either way at all.
All we know for sure is that Yogi Adityanath is not a happy man today.
There’s a meme going around on Twitter to build sympathy for him as the man who brought back Hindu families that fled Kairana, destroyed the #MafiaRaj, waived farm loans, and cracked down on illegal slaughterhouses.
People had even started talking about him as a future Prime Minister. He was being courted as the poster boy of Hindutva to campaign for the BJP in Tripura and Karnataka. The bypoll bloody nose has had one immediate effect. Yogi Adityanath has quickly paid obeisance to Narendra Modi. Even as he insisted that the bypolls were about local issues, he said 2019 will be different because “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s development agenda will play a role there”.
UP proved that, as of now, Yogi Adityanath is no Modi. The Prime Minister might not be too unhappy about that at least.