Report card: What’s behind BJP’s Lok Sabha poll loss in Uttar Pradesh?

The Uttar Pradesh unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has come to the spotlight in the past couple of days over reports of an internal rift. Speculations of strain between Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya intensified after the former blamed “over-confidence” for the party’s electoral setback in the Hindi heartland state.

In a cryptic post on X on Wednesday (July 17), Maurya’s office said, citing the minister, that “the organisation is bigger than the government”. Amid these rumours of strife, the Uttar Pradesh BJP reportedly submitted a report to the saffron party’s top leadership underlining the reasons for its election losses in the northern state.

What does the report say? Let’s find out.

BJP’s report on UP poll loss

The BJP prepared a 15-page report on the basis of feedback from 40,000 party workers across the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, as per an India Today report.

The BJP’s report has found at least an eight per cent drop in the party’s vote share in all six regions of the state – Western Uttar Pradesh, Braj, Kanpur-Bundelkhand, Awadh, Gorakhpur and Kashi.

The BJP won just 33 out of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in UP, a significant fall from the 62 seats it had won in 2019. The opposition INDIA bloc, led by Samajwadi Party and Congress in UP, bagged 43 seats.

The saffron party performed worst in West UP and Kashi regions, where it won just eight out of 28 seats. The BJP clinched eight out of 13 seats in Braj, six out of 13 seats in Gorakhpur, seven out of 16 seats in Awadh, and just four out of 10 seats in the Kanpur-Bundelkhand region.

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The BJP’s report revealed a shift away in electoral support from the party among some castes.

“The report also says Kurmi and Maurya castes moved away from the BJP this time, and the party only managed to get one-third of the Dalit votes,” a source told News18.

As per the report, a 10 per cent decline in the vote share of Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) worked in favour of the Congress in the state.

Reasons for BJP’s setback in UP

The Uttar Pradesh BJP’s report has listed 10 reasons for the party’s dismal performance in the state in the Lok Sabha polls.

It highlights the “high-handedness” of officials and state administration for the party’s poll loss.

“One of the most important factors listed by the state unit for the downfall was that the administration seems to be dominating the party and government. The overreach of the bureaucracy and the police on many issues has not gone down well with the public and, most importantly, BJP supporters. This was also pointed out by a couple of alliance partners,” the source told News18.

Another reason was discontent among BJP workers towards the UP government. The party workers were dissatisfied with the state’s top brass but had no mechanism to flag their complaints, according to the News18 report.

Party workers were also exhausted by the end of the Lok Sabha phases in Uttar Pradesh, which voted in all seven phases. Due to early ticket distribution by the BJP, the workers’ enthusiasm was reduced by the sixth and seventh phases of voting.

BJP leaders’ remarks on “changing” the Constitution if the party crosses the 400 mark also affected its poll prospects. The party also failed to successfully counter the opposition’s narrative of the saffron party abolishing reservations. The state government’s alleged preference for candidates from the general category for recruiting contract workers for government jobs added fuel to this, India Today reported citing the BJP report.

Multiple paper leaks in government jobs for the past six years, the issue of the old pension scheme resonated with government officials, and concerns over the Agnipath recruitment scheme for Army personnel also hurt the BJP’s poll prospects in UP, the party’s report found.

The 30,000-40,000 missing names of BJP’s core voters from the electors’ list in nearly all seats also cost the party.

What next for the UP BJP?

UP BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP national president JP Nadda and to discuss the report. Deputy CM Maurya also met Nadda in Delhi.

More such meetings between state and Central party leaders are in the cards in the coming days. Brijesh Pathak and Yogi Adityanath are reportedly going to be called to Delhi for the same.

“Confrontation to be kept aside and consensus on vital matters [is key]. Eventually, we just have a short span of time before the next Assembly elections in 2027 so it is the need of the hour to take collective responsibility. The entire unit should pull up its socks,” a source told News18.

With inputs from agencies