Next week’s assembly bypolls in nine constituencies of Uttar Pradesh have acquired a political consequence far greater than they would have under normal circumstances. They are a crucial test for the BJP which took a terrible beating in the recent Lok Sabha polls in the country’s politically most significant and populous state.
It is imperative, both for the BJP high command in Delhi and the Yogi Adityanath state government in Lucknow to make a resounding comeback to demonstrate that the party has managed to mend the cracks that had so palpably appeared in its electoral bastion.
The nervousness of the BJP about the bypolls is underscored by their last-minute postponement (by a week) by the Election Commission, a move that has been criticised by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. The EC had already indefinitely postponed, for flimsy reasons, the scheduled bypoll in Milkhipur located in the Ayodhya region where the BJP was humiliated in the general elections by the SP.
For the INDIA bloc, led by the SP in the state, the outcome of these polls will prove whether it has managed to maintain the momentum of the national elections that reduced the BJP to just 33 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state. For Akhilesh, a positive result will no doubt lay the launching pad for the state assembly polls two years later.