LUCKNOW: BJP’s Chandra Bhanu Paswan, a ground-level worker of the ruling party, defeated Samajwadi Party’s Ajit Prasad, son of Faizabad MP Awadhesh Prasad by a margin of 61,710 votes in a high-stake electoral battle in Milkipur. The Milkipur bypoll was necessitated after SP MLA Awadhesh Prasad vacated it following his election to Lok Sabha from Faizabad in 2024. The Mayawati-led BSP did not contest the bypoll while the Congress backed SP as an INDIA bloc ally.The BJP has won the Milkipur seat a total of three times including the just-concluded elections as the constituency has a sizeable population of Dalits, Muslims and Yadavs. The party won the seat previously in 2017 and 1991. BJP’s victory in Milkipur is significant to both the BJP and the SP. While the BJP celebrates the win as a comeback since its defeat in Faizabad in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the result is a wake-up call for the SP. The BJP has been toiling to regain lost ground in Ayodhya after SP wrested the Faizabad seat from the party last year. While a significant chunk of Yadav voters shifted towards the BJP, the turnout of Muslim voters considered to be loyal supporters of SP was comparatively low in Milkipur. The low turnout was an indication to the departure of the Muslims from their customary pattern of heavy polling engagement. Moreover, the SP’s strong Brahmin leadership proved to be a handicap in mobilising the Brahmin voters in Milkipur where Brahmins make a strong 85,000 chunk of total 3.70 lakh electorate. While the bypoll result appears to have undermined the credibility of SP’s PDA (Pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) strategy, it was apparently the over-arching community outreach of the BJP that helped it to make inroads into every community, including Dalits, OBC and the upper caste to emerge victorious. The SP also banked on the local popularity of Awadhesh Prasad, who won the seat in 2012 and 2022 while losing it only once in 2017 to BJP’s Baba Gorakhnath.
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