Following their victories in two of the thirteen assembly seats in the last round of by-elections held in seven states, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be put to the test in ten seats in Uttar Pradesh.
The significance of the polls increases when considering the party’s performance in the state’s Lok Sabha elections, where it lost 62 seats from 2019 and saw a decline in its vote share from 50% to 41.3 percent.
In the meantime, the party is also trying to add more members to the Rajya Sabha, where it has lost four non-aligned members, bringing its strength down from 90 to 86 for the first time in a long time.
With 101 seats, the National Democratic Alliance is currently short of the 113-majority needed to control the 245-member House.
Uttar Pradesh’s assembly seats are now empty after nine candidates, including Akhilesh Yadav, the leader of the Samajwadi Party, were elected to the Lok Sabha and Sisamau, Kanpur, SP MLA Irfan Solanki was disqualified since he was serving a jail sentence in connection with a criminal case.
The Samajwadi Party won five of these ten seats in 2022, while the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and the SP formed an alliance to win one seat. In contrast, the BJP gained three seats, while their ally, the Nishad Party, got one.
Despite the RLD’s recent affiliation with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the Congress and SP—two members of the INDIA bloc—have chosen to run in tandem for the by-elections.
The Bharatiya Janata Party came to power on its own with a resounding majority in the 403-member House, continuing its overwhelming dominance in Uttar Pradesh from the previous two Lok Sabha elections as well as the state elections.
Milkipur, one of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly seats up for by-election, became vacant following the election of Samajwadi Party leader Awadhesh Prasad from Ayodhya to the Lok Sabha.
With the help of more than 55,000 votes, Prasad—a nine-time MLA and former minister from the scheduled caste community—overcame Lallu Singh, a two-time BJP MP.
Because of the Ram Mandir, the BJP was certain it would win the Faizabad seat, but it suffered a serious blow.
Following Lalji Verma of the Samajwadi Party’s election to the Lok Sabha from the Ambedkar Nagar constituency, another seat in Katehari has become vacant. After winning the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat, SP head Akhilesh Yadav resigned from the Karhal assembly seat in Mainpuri.
After being elected to the Lok Sabha from Bijnor, Chandan Chauhan of the Rashtriya Lok Dal resigned from his Meerapur assembly seat in Muzaffarnagar.
After winning the Hathras Lok Sabha seat, Anoop Singh, a.k.a. Anoop Pradhan Balmiki, of the BJP, resigned from his assembly seat in Khair. Following his election on a BJP ticket to the Lok Sabha from the Phulpur constituency, Praveen Patel tendered his resignation from the Phulpur assembly seat in Prayagraj.
In the by-elections, elections will also be held in the following seats: Ghaziabad, Majhawan, Sisamau, and Kundarki.
The BJP now controls 249 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly, while its ally Apna Dal (S) has 13 seats. Eight seats are controlled by the Rashtriya Lok Dal, six by the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, and five by the Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hamara Aam Dal (NISHAD).
The Samajwadi Party (SP) has 103 seats in opposition to the Congress’s two. In addition, one member of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and two members of the Jansatta Dal (Loktantrik) are present.
