LUCKNOW: After facing a humiliating defeat in recent Lok Sabha polls, the ruling BJP managed to salvage its pride by sweeping the bypoll to nine assembly constituencies winning seven of them on Saturday. The main opposition Samajwadi Party, led by Akhilesh Yadav, had to be satisfied with just two seats conceding two from its kitty to the ruling party. The voting for the nine seats had taken place on Wednesday. The BJP alliance not only retained the five seats it had won in the 2022 polls but also won two additional assembly seats – Kundarki in Moradabad and Katehri in Ambedkarnagar – which the SP had won in 2022 assembly polls. While Moradabad’s Kundarki, the stronghold of senior SP leader late Shafiqur Rehman Barq, is a Muslim-dominated seat, Katehri in Ambedkar Nagar has a substantial chunk of Dalit voters. Kundarki was vacated by sitting SP MLA Ziaur Rehman Barq, the great-grandson of Shafiqur Rehman Barq, as he got elected to Lok Sabha from Sambhal, Katehari was vacated by SP MLA Lalji Verma who won from Ambedkarnagar in Lok Sabah election. While winning Kundarki and Katehari add weight to BJP’s ‘Sabka Saath Sabka Vishwas’ narrative and Yogi Adityanath’s “Batenge toh Katenge” call, re-establishing his electoral prowess, the loss has come as a jolt to the Samajwadi Party and its PDA narrative which failed to impress the voters in its stronghold like Kundarki. Moreover, the BJP’s victory in Kundarki, which has Muslim voters in the majority, has given a reflection of the changing political landscape in Uttar Pradesh where the Muslim voters have backed the ruling party in a respectable number this time. The BJP candidate Ramvir Singh has won the Kundarki seat by a huge margin of 1.45 lakh votes defeating Mohammad Rizwan, a two-time MLA, of the SP.
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