Both parties finished roughly where the pre-poll chatter had placed them. The BJP kept its tally of six. The SP grew from three to five. It wrested the Lucknow graduates’ seat from the BJP, took the Agra teachers’ seat from an independent, and held both Varanasi seats in the Prime Minister’s own constituency. The BJP, in turn, captured the Gorakhpur-Faizabad teachers’ seat on the CM’s home turf.
The results of Uttar Pradesh’s Legislative Council polls for five graduates’ and six teachers’ seats, declared on October 29, held few shocks.
One thing is obvious from these polls: Uttar Pradesh is settling into a straight fight. In ten of the eleven seats, the BJP and the SP finished first and second. In the eleventh, Gorakhpur-Faizabad, an independent pushed the BJP close. The BSP and the Congress did not field candidates at all.
For the BJP, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath campaigned for the party’s candidates in every one of the eleven seats, while the SP relied largely on local leaders. Nearly a decade into the job, the Chief Minister remains the BJP’s most recognisable face in the state. His pitch on law and order, welfare delivery, and Hindutva is clear, and no one inside the party comes close to challenging him. The SP has earned its celebrations, but the real battle begins now. The first is the Congress. Now the bargaining has turned sour. Akhilesh Yadav has to decide what the Congress really is for him. It can be an asset that helps consolidate Muslim votes, adds slivers of upper-caste and Dalit support, and lends national weight. Or it can be a drag that is adamant on fighting on seats it cannot win, as happened in Bihar. Akhilesh faces the risk of conceding too much to Congress.
The partnership paid off in 2024, when the Congress turned its share of tickets into six seats. Congress wants well over 150 seats. The SP is said to be weighing an offer of 60 to 70. Posters claiming 200 seats have already caused embarrassment.
Then, SIR is the other unknown factor this time. Does the SP-Congress alliance end up spending too much energy and time on an issue that may not matter much in the end? We don’t know who is likely to benefit from it: the BJP or the SP?
Will the “vote chori” campaign find resonance at the hustings?
