In Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) faced its biggest setback in the Purvanchal region in eastern U.P. with the ruling party winning only nine out of the 27 seats in the region. The winning constituencies included Varanasi and Gorakhpur which are synonymous with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and CM Yogi Adityanath.
The robust social alliance formed by the Samajwadi Party (SP) with 70% tickets to non-Yadav OBCs candidates in the region cemented the numerically social segment leading to its victory, hints the results. The SP president vehemently pushed the Caste Census pitch in the region during campaign describing it essential for the overall development of the society.
On the Jaunpur Lok Sabha seat, Babu Singh Kushwaha of the SP defeated Kripashankar Singh of the BJP by 99,335 votes, while in Chandauli Lok Sabha seat, Birendra Singh of the SP defeated Union Minister Mahendra Nath Pandey by 21,565 votes, likewise on the prestigious seat of Ballia where the BJP field former PM Chandra Shekhar’s son Neeraj Shekhar, the SP emerged victorious by 43,384 votes.
In the hotly contested Ghazipur seat, the BJP’s Paras Nath Rai tested defeat against Afzal Ansari of the SP by 1,24,861 votes. For the BJP even victory margin in Varanasi, from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi contested, the victory margin reduced by almost 65 percent in compare to 2019 polls. While Mr. Modi won the seat by 1,52,513 votes in the 2024 election, in 2019 he won by over 4,79,000 votes.
The SP, traditionally considered a Yadav and Muslim centric party, gave 26 out of 63 tickets to non-Yadav backward communities in U.P. with nominees hailing from Kurmis, an influential non-Yadav OBC social group getting nine tickets, the Nishad community getting four tickets and the Kushwaha, Maurya, and Shakya communities getting six tickets. In Purvanchal, out of 27 seats, the Nishad community got two tickets, while communities like Kurmi, Kushawaha, Shakya, and Rajbhar were given 13 tickets. It paid off with 11 candidates from these social segments emerging victorious in Purvanchal.
Across U.P., the SP gave only five tickets to Yadav candidates, all of whom hailed from party president Akhilesh Yadav’s family. Similarly, on the 17 reserved seats, many tickets were allocated to the non-Jatav Dalits. It is the departure from the past where the Muslim-Yadav combine would get over 40% of tickets from the SP.
