The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), with its narrative of PDA (Pichda, Dalit and Alpashankhak), and caste equation, upset the BJP apple cart in the Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh.

The pre-poll alliance of the Opposition parties won 43 seats in the state, including 37 won by the Samajwadi Party (SP) and six bagged by Congress while the BJP-led NDA won 36 seats, including 33 won by the BJP, two by the RLD, and one by the Apna Dal (S). One seat was won the Azad Samaj Party.

The BJP failed to cash in on the Ram temple card and its welfare schemes as going by the indications, the backwards and Dalits did not support NDA candidates. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 22 rallies and five roadshows could not translate into votes the way they were expected. He even won the Varanasi seat with a lesser margin than that of the 2019 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The election sprang a surprise with the emergence of a new alternative Dalit leader against Mayawati. It’s the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) founder chief Chandrashekhar, who won from the Nagina seat from where the BSP candidate got a measly 5,000 votes.

This is the first election in which SP chief Akhilesh Yadav proved his political acumen emerging from the shadow of his charismatic father, the Late Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Among the 11 Union ministers in the fray, seven lost the elections including Ajay Kumar Mishra Teni (Kheri), Kaushal Kishore (Mohanlalganj), Smriti Irani (Amethi), Mahendra Nath Pandey (Chandauli), Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur), Sanjeev Baliyan (Muzaffarnagar) and Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma (Jalaun).

Two UP ministers, Jaiveer Singh (Mainpuri) and Dinesh Pratap Singh (Rae Bareli) lost the elections while Bhojpuri actor Dinesh Lal Yadav Nirahua lost from Azamgarh.

The Union ministers, who won the elections, are Rajnath Singh (Lucknow), Pankaj Choudhury (Maharajganj), S P Singh Baghel (Agra), and Anupriya Patel (Mirzapur). Actor Arun Govil won from Meerut in his maiden attempt.

As per the ECI statistics, the vote percentage of the BJP dipped to 41.56 per cent this time from 49.98 per cent it had in the 2019 polls after winning 62 seats. In the 2014 polls, the saffron party got 42.65 per cent of votes by winning 71 seats.

The SP, which had got 18.11 per cent of votes after winning five seats, this time, almost doubled its vote share to 33.07 per cent while Congress got around 10 per cent of votes by contesting 17 seats while it had received 6.36 per cent in 2019 polls. In 2014, the SP won five seats and got 22 20 per cent of the votes while winning 2 seats and receiving 7.50 per cent of the votes.

The most depressing performance was that of the BSP which drew a blank after contesting all 80 seats this time. The Mayawati party received 9.30 per cent of votes. In the 2019 polls, the BSP won 10 seats by getting 19.43 per cent of the votes and in the 2014 polls, it got 19.60 per cent of votes but could not win a seat.

Political experts feel the mandate in UP has gone against the NDA as it could not counter the narrative of the INDI Alliance against their ‘400 paar’ slogan linking it to an effort to change the Constitution to end the reservations.

“Issues like unemployment, Agniveer, and inflation raked up by the Opposition prompted the backwards and Dalits to vote en mass in favour of the INDI Alliance candidates. As the BSP failed to retain its vote bank, the Dalit votes went to the INDI alliance candidates,” says the expert.

Besides annoyance against the sitting BJP candidates added to the defeat of the NDA candidates.

As per the result so far, the SP of the INDI Alliance won 33 seats, including the all-important Faizabad seat and claimed Ayodhya where the Ram temple has been constructed.

Congress contributed to seven seats to the alliance tally. Rahul Gandhi won by a record margin of over 3.65 lakh votes. Akhilesh Yadav too won from Kannauj while his wife retained the Mainpuri seat.

There were several surprise upsets in UP. K L Sharma, a close confidant of the Gandhi family, defeated Union Minister Smriti Irani. Nine-time MP Maneka Gandhi lost her Sultanpur seat.

The loss of its sitting MP from Faizabad Lallu Singh was a big blow to BJP’s religious agenda.

The seats was by SP are: Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Moradabad, Rampur, Sambhal, Firozabad, Mainpuri, Etah, Aonla, Badaun, Kheri, Dhaurahara, Mohanlalganj, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Etawah, Kannauj , Jalaun, Hamirpur Banda, Fatehpur, Kaushambi ,Phulpur, Faizabad, Ambedkar Nagar ,Shravasti ,Basti ,Sant Kabir Nagar, Lalganj, Azamgarh, Ghosi, Salempur, Ballia, Jaunpur, Machlishahar, Ghazipur, Chandauli, Mirzapur and Robertsganj.

Congress won from Saharanpur, Allahabad, Rae Bareli, Amethi, Amroha, Sitapur and Barabanki.

BJP candidates won from Meerut, Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Aligarh, Hatras, Mathura, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Bareilly, Pilibhit, Shahjahanpur, Hardoi Mishrikh, Unnao, Lucknow, Farrukhabad, Kanpur, Akbarpur, Jhansi, Bahraich, Gonda, Dumariyaganj, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Deoria, Bansgaon, Bulandshahr, Kaiserganj, Varanasi and Bhadoi.

The RLD won the Bijnore and Baghpat seats.

The Apna Dal (S) won Mirzapur while the Azad Samaj Party won the Nagina seat.