Winners & Losers of UP-Bihar Bypolls: Is Regime Change in the Air?

BJP needs atleast 50 percent vote share, which will not come via division, and so it needs a switch to prosperity.

Indian politics is getting very exciting. The discontent of voters now seems to be turning into anger. If the recent election results are anything to go by, regime change seems to be in the air.

The outcome of the bypolls in UP and Bihar have also captured the headlines.

According to me, there are three winners – Mayawati, RJD and Caste Politics, and three losers – Nitish, Congress and the BJP.

More importantly, there are three takeaways and a warning – which we will cover in the next column and video.

The Three Winners

Mayawati

Without contesting either of the two UP seats in Phulpur or Gorakhpur, Mayawati is the biggest winner. By ensuring a transfer of her votes to SP, she has shown she holds the trump card in deciding who wins UP, and therefore India. Her asking price will see an extra zero now added to it.

RJD

Without Lalu Prasad Yadav, it was expected that his party would fade away. This has not happened. It retained the Araria Lok Sabha seat in Bihar. The RJD is very much alive and kicking, and has the potential to hurt BJP’s Bihar ambitions.

Caste Politics

Without the feel-good factor in terms of jobs and economic growth, it is caste that counts in the Hindi heartland. This is because people perhaps feel a sense of dhoka setting in against the BJP, whom they trusted with a handsome mandate in 2014, and in the UP assembly elections of 2017.

The Three Losers

Nitish Kumar

Because Nitish’s JD(U) failed to transfer its votes to the BJP, there will surely be a rethink in the BJP about the alliance. Nitish has lost face with this defeat, and given an opening to a leaderless RJD.

Congress

Because it really had no business contesting the UP bypolls, Congress too has suffered. It is better off pulling out from UP and Bihar to prevent a division of the anti-BJP votes, and focus on fighting the 150 Lok Sabha seats, where it is the principal opponent of the BJP.

BJP

Since headline management and narrative control is so important for the BJP, it had no business losing the two important seats in UP. Politics is all about perception, and the aura of invincibility is slowly breaking in the land which delivered most of its seats.

There are also three takeaways for the BJP – it needs 50 percent vote share, which will not come via division, and so it needs a switch to prosperity.

The warning is in the form of a reminder to Narendra Modi of a promise he had made in the 2014 campaign – which he has forgotten, but voters have not. Stay tuned for this next column and video.

(This piece was originally published in Nayi Disha, and has been republished with permission. Read the original story here)

(The author Rajesh Jain is a technology entrepreneur whose political venture - Niti Digital - was involved in Narendra Modi’s 2014 election campaign. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)