It was by no means an easy task for the BJP which faced the onslaught of the corona pandemic, and its second wave being more devastating. The surge has overburdened state health infrastructure, just as it has around the world, battered the economy and left the political ecosystem battered.
This gave the opposition a chance to flex its muscles and accuse the BJP of having been reluctant to control the crisis and its deadly ramifications. The BJP faced the prospect of strong anti-incumbency despite fulfilling its Ram Temple promise to Ayodhya.
As the Congress struggled to resuscitate itself and the BSP turned to a moderate stance against the BJP, the Samajwadi Party emerged as the strongest rival. Loyally backed by its traditional Muslim-Yadav vote bank, SP made aggressive overtures to non-Yadav OBCs and upper castes.
Akhilesh Yadav has cobbled together alliances with the RLD led by Jayant Chaudhary and the SBSP led by Om Prakash Rajbhar.
SP’s aggressive campaign threatened to stoke anti-incumbency against the BJP and the latter’s lawmakers began to feel the heat, experts said.
But BJP was in no mood to sit still. It unleashed its gigantic organizational machinery and peppered its election campaign with the presence of its charismatic leaders like Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. The BJP’s ideological source, the RSS, helped solidify the roots of the saffron outfit.
The BJP started picking up the pace in October last year when the government started the inauguration of its landmark projects including the Purvanchal highway and Jewar airport.
Then the BJP played its trump card by announcing a free ration to the poor during the pandemic until Holi. “It was a great program that touched the lives of poor people including Dalits,” said Professor Shashi Kant Pandey, head of the political science department at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University.
The BJP was rocked in January, when it was hit by rebellion by 13 lawmakers, including three ministers – Swami Prasad Maurya, Dara Singh Chauhan and Dharam Singh Saini – who all defected to the SP. The BJP then scrapped its plan to counter anti-incumbency by denying tickets to more than 40% of its incumbent MPs and restricted the exercise to stop further exoduses. The party wisely chose its candidates keeping in mind the caste matrix of the constituency and allied itself with Apna Dal (S) and NISHAD party.
For the first time since 2014, the BJP-led alliance lined up a Muslim with its ally AD(S) ticketing Haider Ali against SP’s Abdullah Azam from the seat of the Suar assembly.