Akhilesh puts up a brave face, says ‘fall of BJP will continue’

A day after his party suffered a drubbing defeat against a resurgent BJP in Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav tried to boost his party workers’ morale by tweeting that SP has proved that “BJP’s seats can be reduced”.

“We very clearly proved that BJP’s seats can be slashed. The fall of the BJP will continue. Half of the misunderstanding has gone, the other half will go very soon,” said Yadav, whose party won 111 seats this time as against 47 seats in the last election.

In a message composed in Hindi, the 48-year-old leader thanked the people of Uttar Pradesh for increasing SP’s seats by 2.5 times and vote share by 1.5 times.

The BJP under Yogi Adityanath grabbed power in UP once again by winning 255 seats while its allies got 18. In a way, BJP’s performance has fallen because in 2017 the saffron alliance had won 325 seats. BJP’s vote share this time was around 41 per cent while that of Samajwadi Party was 32.1 per cent.

The BJP stormed back to power with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath asserting that people have buried the politics of caste and religion.

Also read: Huge win makes 2024 LS polls verdict clear, says Modi

Influential OBC leader Swami Prasad Maurya, who quit the BJP and the Adityanath cabinet to join the SP ahead of the assembly elections, lost in Fazilnagar by more than 45,000 votes.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that such a grand and decisive victory for the party is a guarantee for India’s bright future.

Addressing BJP workers at the party headquarters on Thursday, Modi also referred to the next Lok Sabha polls, scheduled for 2024, saying he hopes that political pundits will note that his party’s win in the four states has also made clear the verdict for the next general election as they had linked its win in 2019 to its sweep of the Uttar Pradesh elections in 2017.