BJP’s internal report claims BSP helped it to win UP elections

The Bharatiya Janata Party admits in its internal report that it was the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) that helped the party win 273 seats in the Uttar Pradesh elections in 2022 as its presence helped in the division of votes which proved beneficial for the BJP.

UP BJP has prepared its in-depth report and sent it to the party's national president JP Nadda. The election results were announced on March 10.

The report claimed that the SP and RLD alliance did not prove to be very successful in western UP. In western Uttar Pradesh, RLD had contested 30 seats on which it was claimed that the farmers’ agitation had a major impact. But it won only eight seats. At the same time, the BJP got support from the BSP's candidature and was successful in the rest of the seats.

The BJP report says that the BSP had spoiled SP’s game in 122 seats. In these seats, the BSP had fielded candidates who belonged to the same caste as the SP candidate. This helped the BJP candidates.

The report further says that in 91 seats where SP had fielded Muslim candidates, the BSP also fielded Muslim candidates. At the same time, the BSP also fielded Yadav candidates in 15 seats where the SP candidates were Yadavs. BJP got the benefit of this and out of 122 seats, the BJP alliance won 68 seats.

The first phase of the election was held in 58 seats spread over in western Uttar Pradesh where farmers’ agitation had its impact. BJP did relatively better in this phase despite pundits saying it would be wiped out. BJP had fielded 17 Jats as candidates of which 10 won, SP had fielded 7 Jats and 3 of them won while RLD fielded 10 Jats and only 4 of them could win the election. A bigger picture shows that BJP won 46 of the 58 seats that went to the polls in the first phase.

The BJP admits that Muslims and Yadavs have given votes to SP en-bloc and where the party had fielded upper caste candidates it got good support from that community. The report said the opposition campaign after the Lakhimpur incident did not have much impact as BJP won all the seats in that district. “The SP gave a tough fight to BJP only in the seventh phase of the election in Azamgarh, Mau, and Ghazipur, where Rajbhar community played a decisive role,” the report said.

The BJP also got the benefit of reposing faith in 214 sitting MLAs who were given tickets in the 2022 elections. While earlier the party had planned to deny tickets to the majority of legislators blaming 'anti-incumbency', but later gave tickets to 214 sitting MLAs. Of which 170 won with a strike rate of 79 per cent. At the same time, out of 104 seats where candidates were changed, BJP won 80.

The BJP lost only 4 seats by less than 500 votes while it won seven seats where the victory margin was less than 500 votes.