Uttar Pradesh: Mixed signals from Lok Sabha, Assembly bypolls results

The BJP’s historic win in Gujarat and the Congress party’s victory in Himachal Pradesh assembly polls justifiably dominated national headlines through Thursday (December 8). In the cacophony of news studios over Narendra Modi’s tightening grip over his home state and the Congress’s consolation victory in Himachal got lost the significant, albeit mixed, signals that bypoll results in the two crucial assembly segments and a prestige Lok Sabha seat of Uttar Pradesh threw up.

The massive victory of Samajwadi Party’s Dimple Yadav in the Mainpuri Lok Sabha bypoll showed that though the party may appear rudderless ever since it lost the UP assembly polls held earlier this, the shadow of its late patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, who passed away in October, still looms large over his family’s pocket borough. While Mainpuri reaffirmed that ‘Mulayam ka jalwa qayam hai’ (Mulayam still holds sway), the BJP’s first-ever victory in Rampur sent an equally strong message of the state’s most notable ‘Muslim citadel’ — and home turf of SP founding member Mohammad Azam Khan — being knocked down by a saffron storm.

Of the three bypolls held in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance won the Mainpuri Lok Sabha and Khatauli Vidhan Sabha in a direct fight with the BJP. The Congress and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party had both decided against contesting the bypolls.

Lotus blooms in Rampur Sadar

As results came in on Thursday, the lotus bloomed for the first time in Muslim-majority Rampur Sadar where the BJP’s Akash Saxena ‘Honey’ defeated Mohammed Asim Raja, a confidant of Azam Khan, by 33,738 votes. This also marked the first time since 1952 that a non-Muslim won the Rampur Sadar seat. Saxena happens to be the main petitioner in the majority of cases lodged against Azam since Yogi Adityanath took over as UP chief minister in 2017.

Also read: Bypolls: BJP wins in UP’s Rampur for first time; BJD bags Odisha’s Padampur seat

Despite being lodged in Sitapur jail at the time, Azam had won this seat by a margin of over one lakh votes in the assembly polls held earlier this year. Though the SP failed to return to power in the state, he chose to stay on as MLA and vacated the Rampur Lok Sabha seat he had won in 2019. However, Azam’s conviction in a hate speech in October forced his disqualification from the UP Assembly’s membership, leaving the Rampur Sadar seat open for contest.

For Azam, the defeat of his close aide comes as a double whammy. Earlier this year, the SP had also failed to retain his Rampur Lok Sabha seat in another bypoll; an early warning sign of the BJP’s growing influence in Azam’s electoral fief. Incidentally, Azam also had to bear the added ignominy of not being able to cast his vote in the bypoll as his name had been removed from the electoral rolls on Saxena’s request. It is pertinent to note that except for a stray Congress victory of Afroz Ali Khan in 1996, Azam has continuously won from Rampur Sadar since 1980, setting a record of sorts by representing the seat ten times. In 2019, when he won the Rampur Lok Sabha seat, his wife Tazeen Fatima had replaced him in the UP Assembly, holding the seat till his return to state politics in March this year.

Speaking to reporters after his victory, Saxena claimed his win illustrates that Muslims had full faith in the government of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Describing his victory as “historical,” he said he had won when 70 percent of voters were Muslims. “It shows that Muslims feel safe and have confidence in the BJP rule of CM Yogi.”

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Raja, on the other hand, charged the ruling party of not allowing Samajwadi Party voters to cast their votes during the bypoll held on December 5.  Raja accused the Rampur police of capturing booths and not allowing real voters to exercise their franchise. He also indicted the district administration for barricading Muslim-dominated localities ahead of polling. Raja’s allegations of SP voters not reaching the polling booths are perhaps borne out in the poor polling percentage (33.83 percent) that was recorded on December 5; a sharp decline of 22.78 percent votes from the 56.61 percent recorded during the Vidhan Sabha election held in February 2022.

SP retains Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat

In stark contrast to the electoral outcome in Rampur Sadar, the Samajwadi Party registered a glorious victory in Mainpuri. Dimple, wife of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, retained the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat by a record margin of 2,88,461, with a 64.08 percent vote share. The win not only keeps the SP’s family turf safe from the BJP but will also mark Dimple’s return to the Lok Sabha — she had won the Kannauj Lok Sabha in 2014, but lost it to the BJP in 2019.

Retaining the Mainpuri seat after Mulayam’s demise was critical for the SP and non-negotiable for Akhilesh, whose own Lok Sabha seat of Azamgarh was won by the BJP earlier this year in bypoll necessitated by his moving to the UP Assembly as the MLA from Karhal. Akhilesh campaigned with all his might, knowing full well that a loss in Mainpuri after the party’s failure to come to power in the state would leave his party workers all the more despondent.

RLD-SP victory in Khatauli

The victory of RLD-SP candidate Madan Bhaiya in Khatauli is equally important. Madan defeated BJP candidate Rajkumari Saini by a decisive margin of 22,165 votes. Saini had been chosen by the saffron party to replace her husband, sitting MLA Vikram Singh Saini, who has recently been disqualified by a court over his conviction and sentencing in a case linked to the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. Interestingly, while Azam’s conviction in the 2019 hate speech had brought about immediate disqualification from the Assembly and declaration of the Rampur bypoll, a similar action had not been taken in Saini’s case till the time RLD president Jayant Chaudhury wrote to the Vidhan Sabha Speaker, Satish Mahana, seeking Saini’s disqualification as an MLA.

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For mafia-don-turned politician Madan Bhaiya, the victory in Khatauli brings him his fifth term in the UP Vidhan Sabha. He had first won as an independent candidate from Khekada while he was lodged in prison back in 1989. But the import of his victory from this farmer and Jat-dominated seat is far greater for the RLD because the party had failed to win Khatauli in the March assembly polls despite the perceived anger among the constituency’s electorate against the Centre’s three farm laws (now repealed).

Jayant had personally led the Khatauli bypoll campaign and the win can now help bolster his efforts to consolidate the RLD’s electoral clout among the party’s agrarian and Jat vote bank of western UP.

For the Samajwadi Party, today’s results have also brought another much-needed morale booster. Dimple’s Mainpuri victory has, at least for now, ended the split between Akhilesh and his uncle, Shivpal Yadav. Shivpal officially merged his Pragatisheel Samajwadi party with the Samajwadi Party and symbolically replaced his party’s flag with the SP flag on his car. He also changed his Twitter bio; declaring himself to be the SP MLA from Jaswant Nagar constituency.

The personal loss they suffered with Mulayam’s death and also compulsions of political survival have apparently brought the Uncle and Nephew closer and the SP cadres will now be hoping that the duo, who parted ways in 2017 after bitter public sparring, will rebuild the party unitedly.