UPA wave continues, biggest ripple in UP where Mulayam begins to sink

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Lucknow, New Delhi, Kolkata: By-poll results in seven states, in as much as they can be seen as a barometer of the national mood, indicate that goodwill for the Congress party and its allies — five months after they won the Lok Sabha polls — remains high. After wins in the recently held state elections in Maharashtra, Arunachal Pradesh and Haryana, the biggest source of cheer for the Congress came from UP on Tuesday.

Mulayam Singh, who has enjoyed an uneasy relationship with the Congress for the past decade and a half, was felled in his hometown, in the only Lok Sabha by-poll in Firozabad. Dimple Yadav, his daughter-in-law, lost to Congress’s Raj Babbar by a margin of over 85,343 votes.

What rankles the SP is the fact that not only has its home bastion crumbled, just six months ago, the Congress had polled barely 6,300 votes here. This reinforced the signal that with significant Yadav and Muslim votes, the drift of the SP’s core voter base — which began in the last Lok Sabha elections —seems to be gathering pace.

Rahul Gandhi’s gamble to personally camp and oversee the push for the Congress paid off and could be a blueprint for the strategy of the Congress in the state in future.

The BSP, too, gained, having quietly secured seats from the Opposition SP in the Assembly and the Congress has got another symbolic victory, in Lucknow, says general secretary and party strategist Digvijay Singh. “This signifies the SP is losing ground, making it a battle in the largest state, between the Congress and the BSP, that is the big shift.”

Another senior Congress leader sees more in this —seats wrested by the ruling party in not just UP, but Kerala and Himachal Pradesh, meant to be Opposition states and strongholds, “are an important signal, that we continue to excite voters in the national scene.”

In Chhattisgarh, the BJP won the single seat in Vaishali Nagar whereas in Himachal, where the Congress had not done so well in 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the party despite conceding a sitting seat (Rohroo), secured one from the BJP (Jawali).