 | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | HURRAY: Dinesh Sharma of the BJP after winning the Lucknow mayor post | | The best part of statistics is that they can be selectively used to draw the conclusions that best suit you. That's what happened in the Uttar Pradesh civic elections after which every party claimed victory, showing off numbers to support its stand. While the BJP is euphoric about winning the most number of mayoralties, Congress has its own reasons to celebrate having won three major towns. The Samajwadi Party (SP) claims that it has won the countryside by winning more than 100 nagar panchayats. The Independents have won close to 150 nagar panchayats-the largest chunk. And this delights the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which stayed away from the elections and did not lend its symbol but backed a huge number of Independents.
| | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | The poll outcome is a personal victory for Rajnath Singh who led from the front since no one else wanted to take up the "lost cause". | | The urban areas remain loyal to the BJP, where in some places like Agra it has won the mayor's seat for the fourth time running. The SP has in some ways kept the western rural belt intact, winning most of the smaller towns and nagar palikas. The BSP stand that people are fed up with the SP rule and will, therefore, vote for it has not been severely tested but is not dented either. The Congress, of course, can claim to have increased its vote share even though its pride took a further dent when it lost the Amethi Nagar Palika. "We have won the other three nagar panchayats in the district, though it hurts to have lost Amethi," says state Congress president Salman Khurshid. To add insult to injury, the party has lost in places like Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Aligarh and Amethi where it has its own MPs. The BJP, on the other hand, has been rejuvenated before the assembly elections. "We are the only credible alternative to the SP and the results have shown that," says party general secretary Arun Jaitley.
| | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | Though the Congress vote share rose marginally, its pride took a dent after the defeat in Amethi, the pocket borough of the Gandhi family. | | The civic poll results and the BJP's impressive performance are being seen as assertion by the upper castes in the caste politics played by the SP and the BSP in the past few years. The sudden revival of the BJP, which pundits had predicted was headed for an earthly demise in the state, is bound to have far-reaching consequences in Uttar Pradesh politics. The BJP was quick to realise the significance of this coming as it did just six months before the assembly polls. Nothing was left to chance and the top leadership descended on the state. Apart from BJP President Rajnath Singh, the party even roped in former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for the campaign. "The results are a befitting reply to those who had been writing off the BJP," Rajnath told India Today. If anything, the results are a personal victory for Rajnath, a former chief minister who has been accused of presiding over the party's downfall in the state. Party leaders are now ecstatic by what they optimistically refer to as the "beginning of the turnaround" in Uttar Pradesh. On the eve of the polls, Rajnath did a two-day tour, campaigning in Kanpur, Varanasi, Lucknow, Agra, Meerut, Aligarh and Ghaziabad. But the Rajnath strategy was not limited to his tour alone. According to a party strategist, no second generation leaders wanted to take charge of the state as they clearly regarded it as a losing proposition. Rajnath decided to shift the focus from the leaders to the workers. He had divided the state into six zones in May. Party general secretary Sanjay Joshi was made overall in-charge. Each zone was handed over to senior party leaders and Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) pracharaks. They are Om Mathur, Krishna Murari Moghe, Hriday Nath Singh, Harindar Pratap, Manohar Lal and Om Prakash Dhankar, who were asked to visit blocks and districts, meet the cadre and report back to Joshi. The message that was sent out-under Rajnath it's back to basics: both in terms of ideology and the organisation. Instead of grand strategies, the party carried out a campaign aimed at the grassroots. In Meerut, the BJP demonstrated against the slaughter of 150 cows, while in Bundelkhand it raised the issue of farmers' suicides. | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | DESERTED: Mulayam was unable to keep his Muslim vote bank intact | | The results couldn't have been better timed for Rajnath, coming as it does on the eve of the BJP presidential elections scheduled for November-end. Apart from the party president, no other central leader toured the state, except for Vajpayee who campaigned in Lucknow. The results, besides rekindling the BJP hopes, has dealt a body blow to the Congress which was relishing the prospects of the former's decline. It thought the upper castes would return to its fold, a party they had left en masse in the late 1980s following the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute. Those hopes now seem dashed. Strangely, while the BJP victories should have left the SP a bit edgy, there is nothing on the surface as the results seem to have suited both the parties. The decline of the BJP in the state in the late 1990s coincided with the rise of Mayawati's BSP and there is nothing that SP chief Mulayam would have hated more than a resurgent BSP chief breathing down his neck. The elections also saw the Ajit Singh bubble burst. His Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) remained among the also-rans even in the state's western parts which were its strongholds, though he can draw some consolation from the fact that his candidates were able to play spoilers in several constituencies. The results keep the state as confused and divided as it has been for the past two decades. -with Priya Sahgal in Delhi Index
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