The year 2022 has been historic for Uttar Pradesh from a political point of view. At the beginning of the year itself, after 30 years, a party returned to power in the state with a thumping majority. From these results it seemed that CM in UP Yogi Adityanath No one will be able to stop the chariot of BJP running under the leadership of.
This guess was also proving to be correct. BJP registered victory in the Lok Sabha by-elections from Azamgarh to Rampur. After this, it seemed that the BJP would be able to win all the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.
Now the voters of Samajwadi Party have also come under the ambit of BJP’s social engineering. The party has focused on the Pasmanda community of Yadavs and Muslims.
But once in the three by-elections held in December, the last month of the year, the equations are seen to have changed a bit. Among these were Khatauli, Rampur assembly by-elections and Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat, which was vacated by the death of Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The Sadar seat of Rampur is Azam Khan’s bastion where BJP has registered victory. The Samajwadi Party is rejecting the BJP’s victory on this seat by saying that its voters were not allowed to vote there. However, BJP says that in Rampur it has also got the votes of Muslims in its favor, especially of Pasmandas.
Talk about Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav won the Mainpuri Lok Sabha by-election with a margin of more than 2.5 lakh votes. The BJP had thrown its full force on this seat. Mainpuri has the largest number of Shakya voters after the Yadavs. BJP had given ticket to Raghuraj Singh Shakya from here who was close to Shivpal Yadav.
But Shivpal Yadav’s coming openly in favor of Dimple left the whole strategy of BJP intact. Even Raghuraj Singh Shakya could not win his own booth. With this big victory of Dimple Yadav, it has become clear in the Saifai family that the real successor of Mulayam Singh Yadav is Akhilesh Yadav. Second, in the seats around Mainpuri, which is called the Yadav belt, a direct message has been sent to the traditional SP voters that Akhilesh is the leader of the Yadavs.
Apart from the election results of Rampur and Mainpuri, the most important is the by-election for the Khatauli assembly seat in Muzaffarnagar. Jayant Chaudhary’s party Rashtriya Lok Dal has registered victory using the caste equation which can become a big headache for BJP in the Lok Sabha elections.
Rashtriya Lok Dal fought this election in alliance with SP. Along with this, Chandrashekhar Ravan, who is emerging as the leader of Dalits in Western UP, was also brought on the stage. The votes of Jats, Gurjars, Saini and Muslims are maximum in Khatauli seat. BJP had fielded Vikram Saini’s wife Rajkumari Saini on this seat. Vikram Saini was convicted in the Muzaffarpur riot case, due to which his assembly membership was also lost.
RLD had given ticket to Madan Bhaiya, who comes from Gurjar community, on this seat. BSP did not field any candidate on this seat. It was believed that the vote bank of BSP could go to BJP. RLD took Chandrashekhar Ravan for this. As a Jat face, Jayant took command of the campaign.
Overall, in Khatauli, BJP did not get a chance to solve any kind of equation this time. At the same time, all the equations went on becoming in favor of RLDA. Jayant as a Jat leader, Gurjar candidate Madan Bhaiya, Dalit leader Chandrashekhar Rao were on the platform of RLD, then Muslims also got support.
The victory from this equation has given a new winning formula to the SP-RLD alliance. The Akhilesh-Jayant duo is definitely going to try this formula on the western UP seats.
Talk about Mayawati’s party BSP, the year 2022 has not proved to be good. Neither the old formula of ‘Dalit-Brahmin’ social engineering worked, nor did the claims of ‘Dalit-Muslim’ alliance turn into reality. The seats of BSP have not only decreased but its vote bank has registered a decline. Being out of power for a decade and Mayawati’s inaction is also behind the tremendous loss to BSP.
On the other hand, the Congress, which is trying to form the government in Delhi, has not got anything in Uttar Pradesh this year as well. Congress has been able to become only two MLAs in the 2022 assembly elections. The worst performance of Congress in UP so far. Only Aradhana Mishra ‘Mona’ from Rampur Khas and Virendra Chowdhary from Farenda of Maharajganj could win from Congress. While Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was handling the election campaign of Congress.
The surprising thing is that RLD and Nishad Party, which are dominant in some parts of UP, have won more seats than the national party Congress. RLD got 8 seats and Nishad Party got 6 seats in the assembly elections.
