UP Election Results 2017: With BJP's clean sweep, here's a look at the partywise performance of heavyweights

After the month-long high-octane polling exercise, the suspense has finally ended and its a clean sweep for brand Modi. The Bharatiya Janata Party has registered an unprecedented win in a state where it was pushed to the sidelines in the past decade.

The high-stake election was on one hand a prestige issue for the BJP, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi heavily involved in campaigning. It was a litmus test for Akhilesh Yadav who recently took charge as the national president of the Samajwadi Party after ousting his father Mulayam Singh Yadav from the top post. Since Akhilesh took over the reins of the Samajwadi Party in January, this is the first Assembly election where he is calling all the shots ranging from choice of candidates to deciding the party’s poll strategy.

Besides, the election was seen as a virtual referendum on Modi’s demonetisation decision, which sucked out 80 percent cash out of the system. The election was equally crucial for Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, which could have salvaged its electoral defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and the 2012 Assembly polls but was reduced to the sidelines with merely 19 seats, it’s worst performance in years.

But apart from the personal agendas of the three main contending parties at stake, many key players were in the fray for the seven-phase polls.

Here is how some of the key candidates fared in their respective seats.

Bharatiya Janata Party

The ruling party at the Centre repeated its sweep in the Assembly election with an unprecedented 312 seats, indicating that the Modi wave is far from spent at least in the Hindi heartland. The BJP, which has been out of power in UP for 14 years, was anxiously waiting for the “lotus” to bloom in the politically crucial state. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP and its ally, Apna Dal, swept the polls bagging 73 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats, riding the Modi wave. Now that the BJP has won the most crucial northern Indian state, it is to be seen who wins the chief ministerial race in the party that lacks a clear leader in Uttar Pradesh. Our guess is that Sunil Bansal, Amit Shah’s right-hand man in Uttar Pradesh could be the chosen one. Bansal, hailing from Rajasthan, was handpicked by Shah after he caught Shah’s eye in the run-up to 2014 polls. A through and through ABVP man, Bansal is likely to meet Sangh’s approval too.

Samajwadi Party

The Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance in Uttar Pradesh left no stones unturned to stop the BJP juggernaut, which had earlier stumbled in Bihar and Delhi, and lead the way for opposition unity in the run-up to the 2019 General Election to Lok Sabha. However, the Yadav Pari-“war” has been grabbing headlines since October last year, when the Yadav scion and UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav finally decided to move out of the shadows of his uncle and father.

The high decibel family drama, totally comparable to your average Bollywood thriller, culminated into Akhilesh wresting control of the party out of the hands of Shivpal and Mulayam. The party further ran into trouble when one of its candidates, Gayatri Prajapati, faced charges of raping a minor girl. While asserting it will retain power in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party (SP) on Friday did not rule out joining hands with arch rival Mayawati to prevent Presidents’ Rule in case of a fractured mandate. Mayawati, however, had chosen to keep mum on the issue.

Congress

Akhilesh forged a pre-poll alliance with the Congress, which would now arguably be known as a monumental mistake for years to come. As the alliance, seen as the BJP’s main rival, failed to outscore the saffron juggernaut, it has created problems galore for the outgoing chief minister who was embroiled in a bitter family feud. SP-Congress loss also lost its chance to salvage an already sidelined Opposition that was swamped by a Modi wave since BJP stormed to power in 2014. Winning UP also means that the BJP will now get to nominate 31 Rajya Sabha members, where up till now it was in minority.

Bahujan Samaj Party

A win was crucial for Bahujan Samaj Party that has traditionally claimed the unwavering loyalty of Dalit voters in the state, but was annihilated in the last Assembly elections and Lok Sabha polls. However, BSP supremo Mayawati, otherwise known for her political astuteness, failed to combine Dalit and Muslim votes breaking away from SP in the wake of Mulayam’s forced political exile. The exit poll predictions had projected heavy losses for Mayawati’s BSP but the BSP supremo had written them off. Turns out that the actual poll results show a shoddier performance for her party with just 19 seats in its account. It has now been relegated to the third position in its home turf, failing to reach even a respectable mark. Mayawati was the first Chief Minister in decades to complete a five-year term in UP without the crutches of an alliance government. In February, Modi had mocked Mayawati’s opposition to note ban, saying BSP is no longer Bahujan Samaj Party but ‘Behenji Sampatti Party’. Mayawati returned the barb by saying he was ‘Mr Negative Dalit Man’.