For all human reasons and his own reasoning Plato understood the correlation between maths and politics—and that was a long, long time ago, much before the first-to-post electoral democracy evolved. Political arithmetic found a definitive equation when Narendra Modi chose Varanasi as his launchpad for the 2014 general elections—a carefully calculated move. What better place to assert the BJP’s Hindutva ideology than a holy city? Mahadev and Ma Ganga, he expounded. What better way to tug at the heartstrings? Above all these, it was equally an acknowledgement of the sway that Uttar Pradesh holds in the country’s political landscape. For the BJP, taking on the UPA’s two-term incumbency, it was important for its PM-candidate to move out of home state Gujarat to the nation’s heartland: The most populous state of 24 crore people that bore eight of the 13 PMs before him. Political maths, right? But for the context, it was all an electoral calculation. And a successful computation, indeed!
The BJP won 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP, accounting for nearly one-fourth of the party’s all-India tally of 282 in 2014. The historic parliamentary mandate couldn’t have been imagined without the UP sweep—the state that sends the highest number of lawmakers to the Lower House of Parliament followed by Maharashtra’s 48 and West Bengal’s 42. The party repeated its victory in the 2017 assembly polls, winning 312 of the 403 seats, and installed monk-MP Yogi Adityanath as the chief minister. In the 2019 general elections, the BJP’s fortunes dipped marginally to 62 seats but it got nearly half the ballots, increasing its vote share by over seven per cent. The BJP, over the past seven years, has nearly eclipsed the role of the two regional rivals in the state—the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The Congress has been out of power for three decades and its slide could be best illustrated in Amethi, where Rahul Gandhi lost in 2019. The Congress won only one—Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli.
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Against this backdrop, the state elects a new assembly in February-March next year along with Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa. Elections are due in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat—both ruled by the BJP—towards the end of 2022.
The BJP gives no quarter when it is fighting elections, but an extra push in UP cannot be discounted for all its mathematical reasons. And that ‘extra’ is more than called for after the second wave of Covid—following reports of botched pandemic management, that UP’s healthcare system has collapsed, that the virus has spread to rural areas, and that corpses of Covid casualties were floating in the Ganga. All negatives that the BJP and its ideological font, the RSS, might find hard to parry. More so, after the party lost the West Bengal assembly polls despite an all-out effort with most of its prominent leaders holding rallies at a time the Covid second wave ravaged India.
Corona Care—CM Yogi Adityanath checks meals for Covid patients
But hold on it must to UP—because its government at the Centre draws power from here. Take the party’s strength in the Rajya Sabha for instance. The BJP’s performance in the state will determine how many members it will have in the Upper House, where the party is unlikely to get a majority by the end of PM Modi’s second term in 2024. The BJP has 93 Rajya Sabha members, still 30 short of a majority in the 245-member House. “The party’s performance in the UP assembly polls will be crucial for retaining the Rajya Sabha seats. The 2017 elections had helped the BJP gain substantial seats in the Upper House as the party got two-thirds majority in the assembly,” says M.R. Madhavan, co-founder and president of PRS Legislative Research. The BJP holds 21 of the 31 Rajya Sabha seats in UP. Eleven of these will fall vacant in July 2022, with the BJP holding five of them.
The Rajya Sabha numbers are just one part of the story since the BJP has managed to pull its weight through with the help of allies and regional parties such as the Biju Janata Dal, Telangana Rashtra Samithi, and YSR Congress Party that have provided issue-based support to the NDA in passing crucial bills in Parliament. More important is the impact that the UP polls will have on national polity. “The UP elections can be a deciding factor for victory at the national level, and also set the trend for other states in the Hindi heartland like Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. Rajasthan has its own dynamics, so may not get impacted as much,” says Badri Narayan, political analyst and professor at Allahabad’s Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute.
He credits the BJP’s rise in Bihar to the party’s performance in UP. When Modi chose to contest from Varanasi in eastern UP, the party had accounted for a ripple-effect in neighbouring Bihar districts too. Modi had hoped to galvanise his party’s prospects in both states, which together account for 120 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats. When the BJP did well in Bihar, winning 22 of the 40 seats in 2014, it became easier for the party to cross the halfway mark. Experts like Narayan believe that Covid 2.0 has dented the government’s image and so the BJP needs to win “300-plus seats ideally” in UP. “If it manages to retain UP after this, 2024 goes to the BJP,” he predicts, but with the caveat that “a loss in UP cannot be recovered in any other state”.
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Sanjay Kumar, psephologist and political analyst at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), avers that UP is more important than any other state for the BJP, and that even the loss in West Bengal does not compare. A loss in UP would bring all its policies under a cloud—the pandemic management, health infrastructure, farmer protest, migrant crisis, and even the Hathras rape and murder. “The entire blame will come on the Centre and it will damage the prospects of the BJP in 2024. The voices of dissent within the party will embolden,” he says. Others like political scientist Sudha Pai believe that the BJP will recoup and recover ground lost to the coronavirus crisis as the elections are eight months away. “The BJP has the ability to turn the narrative even though it does appear difficult this time with the kind of stories emanating from the villages. But then, RSS cadres are helping people,” she says. Yet, will it be so easy to forget the suffering, the deaths? “The BJP will surely
unleash heavy propaganda in the next few months, hoping that people will forget the pandemic,” says political psychologist Ashis Nandy.
Eye-opener—The recent UP panchayat polls were a setback for the BJP
A senior BJP leader says the party knows the shortcomings and is trying to make amends. “Yogi Adityanath has hit the ground and is visible everywhere. The RSS cadres are out in the villages helping people. Modiji is personally ensuring that UP is back on track. The acknowledgement of the problem is the first step towards solving it. The multiple engine of the Hindutva parivar understands the situation and is working on it. And don’t forget, the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya is in progress and it will be ready before the 2024 elections. We have quite a few aces up our sleeves,” he reasons. The BJP had managed to bring together non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav Dalits under the larger Hindutva umbrella to ensure polarisation and big wins in 2014 and subsequent elections. And it may hope its Hindutva card will see it through in UP, but Narayan says “politics of medicalisation” has made religion and caste secondary issues. “Caste is not an electoral mobilisation indicator now, but it will happen closer to the elections. If the UP government manages to handle the pandemic third wave, if it happens, efficiently and conducts the vaccination smoothly, there is every chance it will recover,” he explains.
Rita Bahuguna Joshi, the former UP unit Congress chief who is now with the BJP, is confident that her party will emerge unscathed from the coronavirus crisis. “When people come out to vote, they see the intention of the party and the leader. I concede that we were taken aback by the second wave and were not adequately prepared. The slips that may have happened were not intentional. But after the initial faltering we have made a dramatic improvement. Yogiji is working hard and Modiji is watching,” she says.
The BJP’s Allahabad MP believes that her party has the best chance because the state’s Opposition is in disarray. “There is no other party that can replace the BJP in the state, and the Centre,” Joshi says. She makes a point no one can dispute. “I get a sense that the BJP is comfortable because there is nobody in the Opposition playing an active role in the state. Where are Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati and Congress leaders like Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra? If they come together to fight the BJP, there will be polarisation, benefiting the BJP. And if there is a four-cornered contest, it will again be advantage BJP,” says Sanjay Kumar of CSDS.
The relevance of UP goes beyond the political realm and Joshi—daughter of former CM and stalwart Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna—knows a thing or two about legacy. “The state has a rich history. It is a diverse state with each region having its distinct culture. Not just the prime ministers, a large number of Union cabinet ministers and bureaucrats have come from UP. The state has been the guiding light of national politics and will continue to be so,” she says. It’s a legacy that will be carried forward; whoever gets the electoral equation right will shoulder it.
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The RS Equation
The BJP is unlikely to have the upper hand in the Rajya Sabha till the end of 2024 and, hence, it needs a solid victory in the UP assembly polls to maintain its current tally of 93 in the 245-member House—30 short of the majority mark. But experts say the party may not face any problem in electing a President of its choice next year when Ram Nath Kovind’s term ends. “The President is elected by the electoral college where 50 per cent vote is with Parliament and the other 50 with the state assemblies. UP alone accounts for about 15 per cent (of state assembly) seats, which means its share in the electoral college is about 7.5 per cent,” explains M.R. Madhavan, co-founder and president of PRS Legislative Research.
Though there has been a shift of votes from the NDA in states like Maharashtra, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu, the BJP has gained in West Bengal. “The next big shift can only be expected from UP in the meantime and my sense is that the NDA will get a President of their choice unless there is a complete wipeout in UP,” Madhavan observes.
