As BJP Leaders Resort to Blame Game on UP Debacle, Party Review Absolves Modi and Yogi

New Delhi: More than two weeks have passed since the 2024 Lok Sabha election results were declared but the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is yet to complete a postmortem of its disastrous performance in the key state of Uttar Pradesh. The party and its allies could only win 36 out of the 80 seats despite running a ‘double-engine’ government and contesting on a communally-loaded campaign based on fear-mongering and demonisation of Muslims.

There has been a studied silence about the results from the end of chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who, in case of a positive outcome, would have been quick to highlight the countless factors behind the BJP’s win. Mohan Bhagwat, the chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological fountainhead, concluded a five-day visit to Adityanath’s bastion, Gorakhpur, holding various internal meetings, but did not publicly address the question of the BJP’s defeat.

As of now, it appears that the BJP actually does not have any credible explanation to justify why it lost 29 seats in comparison to its 2019 tally and dropped more than 7% votes against an Opposition force that looked weak on paper.

Infighting and theories of sabotage 

As the BJP continues to hold meetings to evaluate its performance and figure out why it lost so many seats, several leaders have blamed internal rifts in the party and alleged ‘sabotage’ for the slump. Bheetarghat (a Hindi word roughly translated as sabotage) has emerged as a catchword for BJP leaders’ own assessment of the losses.

From Muzaffarnagar in the west to Salempur in the east, the losing BJP MPs have blamed their colleagues for conspiring to make them lose. A more scientific assessment of the BJP’s losses and the INDIA bloc’s wins – the Samajwadi Party and the Congress secured 43 seats – would be possible after reviewing the booth-wise and Assembly segment data.

But for now, the internal blame game that has come to the surface in the BJP and comments made by its disconsolate leaders accusing the Opposition of spreading myths about finishing off reservations reveal a lot about which direction the party’s final assessment might take. In the interim, the mudslinging hollows the BJP’s claims of being a disciplined party where internal disputes are handled behind closed doors.

In Muzaffarnagar, where communal violence in 2013 propelled the BJP to prominence in west UP, the party suffered a major upset. Sitting MP and minister Sanjeev Balyan lost to another Jat leader Harendra Malik. However, after the defeat much of the focus has been on the intensification of the hostility between Balyan and former BJP MLA Sangeet Som, a Thakur.

Balyan blamed the “polarisation of Muslims and division of Hindu castes” and low voter turnout for the party’s losses, but also singularly accused Som of plotting his defeat. Balyan has said that Som “openly worked” for the SP and engineered discontent among the Kshatriya community against him and the BJP.

Retaliating to the charges, Som said Balyan’s own failings were responsible for his defeat. Som asked why Balyan lost in Jat-populated Assembly segments Budhana and Charthawal but competed hard in Sardhana, where Som was elected as an MLA in the past?  Their personal differences aside, the Muzaffarnagar loss also exposed the Jat versus Rajput fault lines within the BJP.

In Purvanchal’s Salempur, the BJP’s sitting MP Ravindra Kushwaha lost his seat by a thin margin of 3,573 votes. Kushwaha has accused Vijay Laxmi Gautam, a minister in the Adityanath government, and Sanjay Yadav, the BJP’s Ballia district president, of conspiring against him in a “planned manner”. Three out of the five Assembly segments of Salempur fall under Ballia district. Gautam, a Dalit, is an MLA from Salempur.

A sitting BJP MP also lost in Banda in Bundelkhand. The losing MP R.K. Singh Patel said he tasted defeat because of the intense protests by “former MPs and MLAs” of the BJP. “They did not come on stage,” said Patel, accusing former MPs and MLAs of the party of working for the SP candidate after they were denied tickets by the BJP.

Also read: From Kairana to Kushinagar, the BJP Lost Popular Support in All Regions of UP

Among the major upsets in UP, this time was the defeat of Union minister and OBC leader Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti in Fatehpur. Jyoti has said there were some who were “putting roadblocks in Modi’s mission,” in clear indication that she felt she was a victim of sabotage.

Sachidanand Hari alias Sakshi Maharaj, the hardline saffron leader managed to win from Unnao again but claimed that the BJP had lost seats in the state due to some “gaddar (traitors)” and “asteen ke saanp (enemies concealed as friends)”. Mahendra Nath Pandey, another Union minister who lost his election, argued that the BJP could not tackle the narrative that it was going to change the constitution and scrap reservations if voted back. “The performance was not weak. We could not assess the impact of the disinformation against us,” he said. Pandey lost in Chandauli, which he had won twice, in 2014 and 2019.

Also read: In UP, Defeat Wasn’t Just BJP’s But Also Its Allies’

The Apna Dal (Soneylal), the BJP’s ally, has issued a show cause notice to its sitting MP Pakaudi Lal Kol after his daughter-in-law and the NDA’s candidate Rinki Kol lost in Robertsganj. The ADS believes that the MP’s inactivity after being denied a ticket this time was a prime reason for its defeat. The infighting and theories of sabotage, though operative on some seats, do not, however, explain the BJP’s debacles across the state.

Factors behind BJP’s poor showing 

The NDA became unpopular in 2024 across the length and breadth of UP, if we compare the vote percentage from 2019. As reported earlier by The Wire, the NDA dropped vote percentage in 79 out of 80 seats. Even in Gautam Buddha Nagar, where it increased its vote share, it was by only 0.05%.

Also, the theories focusing on sabotage, inactivity of the BJP workers, and the lack of cooperation and coordination between the RSS and BJP take away the credit from the Opposition parties, in particular, their leaders Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi, who addressed livelihood issues and caste aspirations without falling into the trap of Hindutva. The internal blame game also absolves Modi and Adityanath of their accountability towards the loss in popularity of the party.

Several BJP leaders have also spoken about the non-cooperation of the state bureaucracy, neglect of the common BJP workers, anti-incumbency against some sitting MPs and lack of enthusiasm of the BJP supporters for the poor result. Unsavoury scenes were reported during a review meeting in Saharanpur where supporters of the losing BJP candidate shouted slogans against BJP legislators accusing them of playing a role in the defeat.

In Siddharthnagar, where the party was reviewing why it lost votes in the Doomariyaganj seat, two sides of BJP workers came to fisticuffs amid a blame game over the result. A heated exchange was also reported in a meeting during the review of the Faizabad constituency.

As we await the BJP’s full report card on UP, the party can take several immediate lessons from its humbling results.

First, it must tone down or completely shed its arrogance. A public mandate is temporary and is not a license to take voters for granted. The BJP’s wins in the state since 2014 had made it believe that the Opposition was no match for it. It was proven wrong. Its over-the-top slogan of 400 par proved counterproductive as it provided the Opposition with the ammunition to mobilise Dalits and OBCs on the issue of saving their constitutional rights. The BJP might dismiss the Opposition campaign as fear-mongering but its leaders did provide fuel to those fears by talking about the need to change the constitution. BJP MP Lallu Singh learnt it the hard way in Faizabad.

Also read: Akhilesh Yadav’s ‘PDA’ Trumps Modi-Adityanath’s Hindutva in Uttar Pradesh

Second, instead of searching for scapegoats to blame, the party must acknowledge the fading influence of its cynical election narrative built on pitting communities against each other. In this election, led by Modi himself, the BJP tried to pit marginalised Hindu communities against Muslims on the issue of reservations. However, it did not succeed. The BJP must introspect why a large section of Hindus appeared indifferent to its anti-Muslim campaign. Why did the BJP’s polarising tactic and fear-mongering against Muslims fail to incite Hindus to vote for it? These are the questions it needs to answer, rather than getting trapped in petty number games and a superficial assessment.

Third, the BJP must also realise that it cannot any longer bypass burning livelihood concerns around inflation and jobs. It has to deliver on these fronts if it wants actual change in the lives of people, in both rural and urban areas. Free ration schemes and piecemeal infrastructural changes might have seemed like a relief to people in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis. But with the return to normalcy, such measures are not sufficient.

Fourth, the BJP must also acknowledge that a section of young voters, though inclined towards its ideological project, will also hold it accountable on the issue of employment. The Agnipath scheme has caused immense discontent among rural youth who look at the armed forces as a means to generate a dignified life and long-term employment. The Opposition capitalised on this discontent and job insecurity. The lesson for the BJP is that it cannot take arbitrary decisions without consultation from stakeholders, in this case, millions of young men dreaming of serving the nation in uniform. The large number of paper leaks of government jobs has also dented the government’s image and frustrated lakhs of voters. The scandalous police constable recruitment examination paper leak in the months leading up to the election served as a big blow to the BJP’s claims of fulfilling the aspirations of the youth.

Fifth, the centralised manner in which the BJP has functioned since 2014 and the reduced autonomy of legislators and MPs have allowed issues to simmer at the ground level without a proper mechanism for timely redressal. The over-dependence on the cult of Modi has also ensured that the elected representatives do not develop their own support base.

Sixth, and perhaps the most important, is that the BJP must acknowledge that its tired formula of pitting non-Yadav OBCs against the Yadavs or the Yadavs against the SP’s Yadav family might no longer have the same potency that it did when it was in the Opposition. The BJP has been in power at the centre for over a decade and in the state for over seven years. Yet a major part of its campaign was dedicated to recalling the failures and mishaps of the rule under the Opposition parties.

The voters already punished the Opposition parties for their mistakes by uprooting them from power. The BJP would be better served to address people’s immediate grievances rather than harping about the past or over-indulging in the Hindutva card, which, as these elections showed, can be trumped by caste and livelihood issues.