BJP’s Win, Akhilesh’s Lament

Saffron surges in the result to the keenly contested Milkipur by-election as BJP triumphs in a symbolic battleground in Uttar Pradesh.

Uttar Pradesh

The significance of the Milkipur by-election and the BJP’s stunning win was hard to overstate this time. The results were decisive with the BJP’s Chandrabhanu Paswan crushing the Samajwadi Party’s Ajit Prasad by a staggering 61,710 votes. It gave a much-needed fillip to the saffron party which had suffered a major upset in its traditional stronghold of Uttar Pradesh during the Lok Sabha election last year.

The Milkipur win was an emphatic answer given by the BJP to its surprising defeat in Faizabad in the Lok Sabha elections, when the Samajwadi Party’s Awadhesh Prasad had pried the seat from the BJP’s grip. The loss had been a blot on the saffron brigade’s record, a jarring rebuke from a constituency that houses the very epicenter of its ideological triumph: the Ram Janmabhoomi.

Not willing to take the humiliation lightly, the BJP rebounded with a show of force in Milkipur, where it had historically struggled to gain a foothold.

If the BJP is savouring its moment of reckoning, Akhilesh Yadav is now busy playing the role of the aggrieved loser which he has perfected over the years. As the scale of the SP’s defeat in Milkipur became clear, Yadav did not hesitate to allege electoral malpractice. He claimed that BJP workers had engaged in ‘fake voting’ and that the Election Commission had turned a blind eye. A familiar refrain, almost a reflexive reaction at this point. For Yadav, every electoral setback seems to come with a conspiracy theory attached.

But Milkipur’s verdict was not forged in the backrooms of shady operatives; it was delivered at the ballot box, and it carried a clear message. The Samajwadi Party had wagered on dynasty, fielding Awadhesh Prasad’s son, Ajit Prasad, as its candidate. The BJP, on the other hand, put forward Paswan, a businessman and political outsider who, crucially, belonged to the influential Pasi community. This was no accident. The BJP has methodically chipped away at the SP’s hold over Dalit-OBC voters by recalibrating its own caste arithmetic. The saffron party, once considered the bastion of upper-caste Hindus, has spent years carefully constructing a broad coalition of non-Yadav OBCs and Dalits, leaving the SP looking like a party shackled to its past.

What made the BJP’s triumph even more remarkable was that it did not rely solely on Hindutva. To be sure, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath made ample use of the Ram Mandir’s symbolism in his campaign speeches, invoking faith as a unifying political force. But he hammered away at the Samajwadi Party’s legacy of ‘goonda raj’ and Muslim appeasement. The margin of victory, the highest ever recorded in the constituency, was proof that the electorate had made up its mind well before polling day.

If Milkipur’s verdict is any indication, the BJP is on track to regain lost ground in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections. The SP, on the other hand, finds itself is a slough of despond. Despite its surprising win in Faizabad earlier this year, its larger trajectory remains uninspiring. The party continues to struggle beyond its core Yadav-Muslim base, and its overreliance on dynastic candidates reeks of political complacency.

Perhaps Akhilesh’s real frustration stems from the realization that the tide is turning against him. In Faizabad, he was able to script a shock victory, banking on dissatisfaction with the BJP’s economic record and a well-organized Dalit-Muslim coalition. But one win does not make a resurgence. The BJP has quickly course-corrected, reinforcing its grassroots presence and tapping into voter anxieties that the SP has failed to address.

For the BJP, this win demonstrates that the party can still mobilize its core voters with the right mix of religious fervour and caste-based outreach. More importantly, it sends a message that the saffron juggernaut is far from losing momentum in Uttar Pradesh.