Lucknow: The ruling Bhartiya Janta Party suffered a setback in Uttar Pradesh after the party lost both the Legislative Council seats to the rival Samajwadi Party at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s turf Varanasi.
The Samajwadi leaders Ashutosh Sinha and Lal Bihari Yadav won the graduates’ and teachers’ seats respectively. BJP finished in third place on the graduate seat.
The twin victories-graduate and teachers constituency both in Varanasi- has given a shot in the arm to the Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi party which has already started preparations for the 2022 polls. Applications are being invited from the aspirants all across UP.
Despite winning 3 teachers and 3 graduate constituencies of the total 11, the mood in the BJP was of mourning.
Interestingly, PM had participated in the Kartik Poornima or Dev Deepavali festival in his constituency on 30 November and had lunched an expansion of a highway and addressed the public as well. Yogi was also present. Polling was held on 1 December.
“This is painful and embarrassing both,” admitted many senior leaders of the BJP.
A section of BJP leaders feels that SP won because of the strong support of the Kayastha community which has a sizeable presence in the graduate and teachers constituencies both. Samajwadi Party leader Deepak Ranjan also credits the community for the victory of Sinha.
“Despite a considerable population of Kayastha in Varanasi which is an educated community, BJP did not field Kayastha candidates. It assumed that having Mahesh Srivastava as Varanasi Vibhag pramukh is enough to get the community votes,” a BJP leader rued.
BJP had fielded Thakur candidates-Chetnarain Singh and Kedarnath Singh (sitting MLC on the graduates’ constituency).
To the party’s consolation, it managed to end the decades-long dominance of eight-time MLC Om Prakash Sharma in Meerut.
The party has called an urgent meeting to review the results Saturday evening and find out the reasons behind losing the grounds in Varanasi. Radha Mohan Singh, the party’s UP-in-charge will preside over the meeting.
