Uttar Pradesh Elections | How local and international issues dominate the narrative

A woman shows her inked finger after casting her vote at a polling station in Uttar Pradesh. (Image: Election Commission)

The 2022 elections in Uttar Pradesh — held in seven phases and spread over a month — was intended to be a high stake battle. That is because of the larger context of the importance of UP which has 80 of the 543 parliamentary seats. With preparations afoot by the opposition parties to create an alternative to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the results in UP are expected to decide the winning combine for the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.

That's precisely why a four-cornered battle involving the BJP, the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP), and the Congress turned out to be a rather direct bout between the Chief Minister Yogi Adityananth-led BJP and the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP. If Adityanath has showed confidence that he can steer the BJP with the backing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Yadav has emerged as a serious contender with his alliance of caste-based parties posing a stiff challenge.

Can Adityanath be voted back to power in a state where no Chief Minister has been given a second consecutive term in the last 37 years? The last Chief Minister to win a second term was Congress’ Narayan Dutt Tiwari in undivided UP in 1985. Another fact, which will reflect on how unpredictable and perhaps even unstable UP politics is, is that no Chief Minister before BSP chief Mayawati in 2012 completed a full term in office.

None of the previous Chief Ministers from the BJP — Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta and Rajnath Singh — were elected for a second term, but Adityanath is confident of his chances.

Adityanath has remained the face of the BJP's campaign, counting on his record of governance with an emphasis on his comparatively cleaner administration, with better deliverables to his credit both on the development front as well as the law and order side. By coming out in full support of Adityanath, Modi signalled the BJP's readiness to risk projecting an incumbent CM despite numerous anti-incumbency factors at work.

As the BJP's campaign forged ahead, Yadav too showed his ability to puncture the state government’s claims on some counts.

As six phases of voting got over, numerous issues came to the fore putting the BJP in a fix. They included the menace of stray cattle (due to crackdown on illegal abattoirs and strict enforcement of ban on cow slaughter) threatening agriculture, which even got an acknowledgement from Modi as he took a pledge for a solution by the next BJP government.

Even the ongoing 'Operation Ganga' (where thousands of Indians stranded in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion are being evacuated) came under criticism by the Opposition saying it reflected the BJP government’s poor performance.

The Modi-led Centre was quick to react, and the evacuation process topped government agenda. Union ministers were sent to countries in Ukraine’s neighbourhood from where students are flying back to India. Modi has been holding meetings in Delhi overseeing the operations and decided to meet with some of the students who have returned to India from Ukraine, at Varanasi. Once again Modi showed his astute political sense when he said that had previous governments invested in medical education in India, they would not have had to go through this ordeal. Modi emphasised that his government is working to correct the past mistakes by opening more medical colleges at district level.

It is also important to note that all through its campaign the BJP has not taken its feet off the pedal; complacency has not set in even in seats and phases where the saffron party had an advantage. It preferred to show its rank and file that they needed to work hard to win each and every seat.

The BJP did appear foxed by the SP’s ability to show in some belts that its allies such as the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, the Mahan Dal, the Pragatisheel Samaj Party (Lohia), and the Janvadi Party (Socialist) were putting up a spirited fight to the BJP's might. These alliances represented the coming together of social combinations — Jats and Muslims, Yadavs and non-Yadav OBCs, and even upper castes and Jatavs, and that got the BJP worried about its candidates in those select seats.

It’s an entirely different story for the other national party in the hustings, the Congress. Its lone crusader, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has attracted large crowds at her rallies, and this could turn into voted for the party’s candidates. That said, Congress’ chances of a podium finish remain bleak.

Shekhar Iyer is former senior associate editor of Hindustan Times and political editor of Deccan Herald.

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.